


The city and the sea

by imsfire



Series: Stardust and Moonlight [2]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Angst and Feels, F/M, Jedha, Magic, Witch! Jyn, Witchcraft, a certain amount of violence, curses and enchantments, fairytale/dark ages type fantasy setting, mythical creatures, other characters will be added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:07:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 39,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21748012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: Winter, and a world at war; an ancient city occupied by a cruel enemy, where two travellers arrive on a desperate quest.The sequel to "By stardust and moonlight".
Relationships: Cassian Andor/Jyn Erso
Series: Stardust and Moonlight [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1567459
Comments: 125
Kudos: 108





	1. Chapter 1

The sky is an uncertain blue, as if spring has touched it and drawn back from the chill. Its light catches in the ghost of a sea, in waves breaking at her feet without splashing her, and sparkling ripples that send small glints refracted onto the pale stone of the quay. All around, a grey, doubtful town, rising in tiers above a harbour and river mouth, with faint hills beyond that hesitate between misty green and the shadow of snow.

Jyn knows it’s a dream, even without the unsteadiness of the world around her. True, the place feels real, as dream-visions do, grown from memory and hope; but real and unfamiliar at once, so that her first instinct when she found herself here had been to look for Cassian. She’s shared his dreams almost nightly for weeks now, is beginning to know his inner world like her own. Both the still-wintry town and the summer-bright sea have a feel of him. Maybe this is somewhere he hopes to reach, a place of safety or a lost home of the past. 

But she’s met Maia sometimes in the dream world, too; so the whole dream may be coming from her. 

The lucidity of these dreams is new to her; and they started with Cassian, with the two of them coming together as a partnership. The memory of the first one is sweetly intense. Dreaming herself out in the snowfield below Red Crag, and turning to see him running towards her with his hand outstretched, in the broad light of noon. Cassian human, human by daylight, still a bright shock to her then, even before she realised this was his dream also, meeting with hers. It’s a thing she had never heard of, not even in old tales, for people to share dreams, touch hands there in the night-world. 

But then, she’d never heard before of the strange bond of heart they share, either. It’s still there, steadying again after the jolt of the curse-breaking and growing stronger daily. Everything between them is new and bright, a magic no-one ever wrote down before. They have embraced it all as a gift, as they do one another, with joy.

It will be odd if Cassian isn’t here; there’s sunlight in this dream, and she’s noticed how often that goes with his night-world. He dreams the sun, and whenever the days are bright, it seems to lift his hopes. Each time their journey has brought them close to the coast he smiles at the sight of the sun on the sea. He couldn’t see the daylight at all, for so long; it’s clear that the light is dear to him, and the sun’s warmth too. 

She’s smiling now, just thinking of him. His strength and his patience, his steady thinking courage, that never falters nor demands her attention. His touch, his hand loyal in hers, his strength and warmth at her side at night. Close around her as she knows he is in the waking world. 

His voice murmuring _The wind’s going to change, I can smell it_ , and his sidelong smile at her. Captain Wolf-nose indeed.

She looks at the vague outlines of stores and docks, lifting cranes, rooftops, and the long stone quay all empty of the wide-awake bustle of a normal harbour. Wonders if he’s somewhere nearby, among these hovering dream streets; making his way towards her even now. There’s a sense of him in the air and the sun, she can feel it more and more, as if he might materialise by her side at any moment.

If all else goes against them in the weeks to come, at least they’ve had this time together, and at least they can see one another in dreams. Force forbid they be separated; but if they are, they have this. To be able to reach him, speak with him, no matter what; it might be the saving of her.

She’d never thought to let herself _need_ like this. The bond between them; she’s never known what a well-spring of strength that partnership could be. What hope it could forge. Someone who is with her, standing their ground with her, always, someone she can always be with, and be herself. Love’s hand to touch hers, love’s smile to reassure her. Never known till now. Cassian doesn’t fear her or need to be sheltered from her, he doesn’t want to control her powers or for her to be someone else for his sake. He loves her as she is, the woman he knows, who was his friend from the first. The woman who loves him.

As, God knows, she does.

“Hey there.” A familiar voice, interrupting her brooding. She turns, and it’s Maia after all, grinning and substantial, beside her on the quay. “Made it into your dream again, ha! I’m getting better at this game.”

“Well done.” Jyn reaches out, touches her friend; laughs in a catch of breath, because this too is still a strange new thing. And it is good to see Maia.

They embrace a little awkwardly, aware that edges aren’t quite real here. 

“You say you’re in my dream but I’m sure I’ve never been here. I was just wondering what this place is.”

Maia looks around, and draws herself up. “Hey, will you look at that? It’s mine. It’s Alderhaven. Or, well, almost. It looks kind of _off_ around the back. But mostly Alderhaven. Ha, fuck, isn’t that something, eh?” She’s beaming with pride. “We got here yesterday, that’s why I’ve been trying to reach you.” She gestures, pointing out features. “There’s the mouth of the Alder river, and Aldraig over the water, where the boatyards are. That big building with the weathervane –“ it coalesces as she speaks – “that’s the harbourmasters’ office. Little spire in the street behind is an old Force Temple. Bodhi was so pleased to see that!”

“He’s well?”

“He’s very well. Come into himself, he has, what with the travelling and all. Seems to have done him good to be Master Herald again, and be among folks that have a respect for his skills.” Maia looks out over the harbour mouth again, towards the sea and all the shining light. “Weather’s not like this here, though. Weather’s filthy, to be honest. Raining like stink.”

Jyn pulls a face in sympathy. “We’ve had it dry, the last couple of weeks,” she admits. “Calm and cold. Good travelling weather.”

“Huh, lucky you. How is Captain Wolfman? I see he’s not with you here.”

“I think he might be – he feels nearby. It’s hard to explain. It’s like the world smells of him.” Jyn grins. “He’s well and happy, anyway. Getting very fond of the horse, too.”

“Hells, I’ve envied you having horses, these last few weeks. Winter wet isn’t the best for a long journey afoot. But – well, we made it this far, so –“ Maia shrugs and grins back. “Ach, by the hells, why am I chattering? News, I have news, listen. We’ve reached Alderhaven. Most of the others want to stay here. Hunker down, bide out till spring, find work. Dock labouring or something. This place is packed, in the waking world, ships three deep moored up, warehouses jammed, so there’ll be plenty of that kind of work. It’s pretty uncanny to see it like this, all empty and sunny and silent.” Waves lap softly against the stone by their feet, a voice like a sigh, and she looks around and shrugs again. “Well, so. Yes, Edrio and the guys want to stop a month or two, but Rue and me, and Bodhi, we’ve found a coaster coming south in a couple of days. The seas are quiet, no great wind for all it’s wet, the locals say the calm weather’s chancy in winter but it can last a week or more. Captain of this ship, he’s all for taking a chance, making a small run south, just inshore work.” She grins, suddenly mischievous. “Between you and me, I think he might be smuggling. Bodhi certainly thinks so, says no-one from hereabouts would risk it otherwise. Fish oil or something, from up north. And, well, maybe Rue made it worth his while too. He might have had the odd bit of gold about him, you know? But fuck it, I’m chattering again. Dream-brain, eh? It means we’ll be with you in Jedha before the full moon. You don’t have to head off to the Isles alone.”

Jyn hugs her in jubilation. “Thank you! I didn’t dare hope for so much.”

“Wouldn’t miss this fight for the world,” Maia tells her. “We owe the shit-sucking Imperials for the Commander and all our comrades from the Crag.”

“I’m glad beyond measure to have your help,” Jyn says.

But Maia is becoming gauzy, as though her presence is less sure. Jyn holds onto her hands firmly, anchoring her a moment longer so as to share her own news quickly. “We’re over the Moel hills now, most of the way around the coast plains. We passed Long Bay two days ago. Cassian says we’re maybe two days’ travel from Jedha.”

“Shit, way ahead of us then,” Maia grumbles. “Even if the winds stay gentle for us. You and your horses, eh?”

“Only the one horse, truly! And we don’t ride much, a lot of the time one or other of us has been on foot. But he’s carried our things and that has made travelling easier. Oh hark at me, now I’m chattering too. We must both be about to wake.”

“Wait for us at Jedha?” Maia says, transparent and hopeful. “Four days from now, Force willing?”

“Yes, yes, I promise.” Jyn’s hands close on nothing and she goes on speaking quickly to the fading image of her friend. “We’ll be glad to get a rest. And it gives us the chance to sound the place out. We’ll look into the cost of taking ship to Ea’dhu, see who might be willing to bear us there. I’ll see you soon!”

The next wave strikes the quay with a sharp breathy sound and Maia’s ghost face smiles and whispers “Hark at Rue snoring, bless him, my love –“ and she vanishes like mist in the sunlight.

The waves are silent once more, suddenly, but a seabird calls somewhere high up, out over the wide river, and Jyn takes a long breath, waiting to wake. The dream world shivers around her, painted gauzes floating on the air, rippling images, a coast of fog and delicate colour. Then it stills again; but changed, the light brighter now, air hot and brilliant as high summer. When she looks to the sea, the sun glares on the water and there are far islands that gleam, dark as onyx beads on the skyline.

The warmth creeps inside her like a smile and she turns to look back at the town. It’s brighter and more solid, every building transformed, no longer Maia’s vague Alderhaven-shadow but a fine southern port with white stone walls shining in the light and glazed tile roofs glinting. And it’s no longer deserted. Smiling people in bright clothes move about on the harbour-side, and Cassian is coming towards her down the quay. He’s shining too, as if the moon that held his life captive for so long remains still inside him.

She goes towards him, her arms outstretched. No matter that in moments she’ll be awake beside him, it’s still a joy to meet him here. A magic never anticipated, in all her years of learning, every spell-text she ever studied. Their hands touch.

“Yours?” she says with a nod over his shoulder at the sparkling town.

“I think maybe so.” With that smile that she still can’t quite believe is for her, that is so innocent and astonished, so shy, so sure. “The colours look like home, so yes, it must be.”

Hands on her shoulders, sliding over her back as he folds her to him. She lets herself be held and rocked on his breast, shielded by his arms.

“You missed Maia,” she says into his waistcoat. He’s dressed in clothes she’s never seen in the waking world; a green shirt, a blue vest bordered with strips of snow-white fur, an embroidered belt at his waist. The warmth and comforting scent of him on them, that she presses close to.

“I saw her just as she was fading out. Jyn, it must be well after dawn, we’re going to have to wake…”

“Just one moment more,” Jyn murmurs. Holding him. Here in the dream somehow she knows herself more safe than anywhere in reality; safe in the trust they have in one another, safe in his heart. And she can show it, because this is Cassian. “Just hold me. I’ll tell you all her news when we wake up.”

One moment more; to stand embracing inside this secret place that they share, and look out at the waves, and the dark silhouettes of Ea’dhu and Sant Corou on the horizon. Safe here, with all the danger ahead of them across that shining sea.

“Is this sunny weather a gift from you, then?” she asks, to prolong their moment of peace.

“This is how I remember Feste. Always the hot sun. The harbour at Chiluc with the heat-glare on the marble, and water so clear you could see the little fish. Islands in the distance.” On the skyline, the misty blue of land shimmers into being again and the dark islands vanish. “But this isn’t really Chiluc, the view looks more like Alderhaven.”

“Bit of Maia’s dream left-over, maybe, then. That’s where Mai and Rue and Bodhi have got to, she told me. Ah, but it’s good to have the warmth here, even just in a dream it’s a blessing.”

The sunlight gleams in his eyes as he blinks down at her and smiles lopsidedly. “One day, when all this ends and we’re free, I’ll take you to Feste, and you can enjoy the sun every day.”

“I will enjoy that,” Jyn says. Meaning more than just the thought of going home with him; the whole idea of a future with freedom in it, and choices and chances for them both.

For so many years, life has been lived from day to day, at most from month to month but looking no further ahead. Having no further hope. Keeping herself secret, trying to do what small good she could without drawing attention. Now life is war and the preparations for it, is danger and constant alertness, and no more hiding, and the journey towards a risk and a goal she would never have imagined possible. The magic in her blood let free, the starfire in her fingertips, heat-haze and silver light, the white heart of the sun. Daily, unceasing, demanding to be learned and understood. Impossible to ignore.

Cassian kisses her forehead. “It’s morning, love.”

“I know,” Jyn says. 

Morning, day, reality again.

Just on that, she’s awake. There’s no more blurring or gauze-like layering of edges. Just a calm step into daylight as she opens her eyes.

She’s lying on her side, rolled up inside their thick travel blankets, and facing Cassian as he sighs, surfacing from the dream beside her. One of her hands rests over his heart, held secure in his strong grip. His lashes flutter as he fights up through sleep, and he draws another deep breath, and wakes too. He’s already smiling at her as he blinks and wrestles a yawn.

She’s still getting used to the fully human Cassian. He’s trimmed his beard and his hair, no longer looks as shaggily wolfish as he did while the curse still held. That first time she shared his dreaming, he’d still been sliding into wolf and out again in his own mind sometimes. He clasped her hands in joy as they met, and then the next moment he’d been pressing a cold whiskery nose into her palm while his tail swung to and fro merrily. But he’s let go of the pain, and held on, patient with himself until the bitter past stays where it should and the present remains free. 

They no longer need to pay close watch to the phases of the moon, no longer need to prepare for him to be taken from her each day. She never sees the wolf now, the shaggy face she once knew so well. 

Cassian the man has grown steadily into his restored self. He was shy at first, of his own body, of her, of the daylight, of his own two-legged shadow even. Then jubilant, each morning, each new day, as the fact of being free was affirmed once again. The unnatural pallor of his skin when he was first freed is gone now, faded by daylight, by the wintry bite of wind and sun as they travel south, and a healthy tan has taken its place.

His years of being a wolf have shaped him, she knows, even now that it no longer rules him. He can read a landscape as no-one else she’s known, can tell the age of tracks and the health of the creature that made them. At times he remarks on smells she can barely detect, or freezes more still than the trees of the forest while crows pass overhead. But it’s as a man that he sleeps beside her, a man walking the long trail, a man holding her hand or feeding the horse or cooking the meal. A man; her man.

He holds her close each night, and she knows herself safe with him. 

Weak wintry sunlight filters down through the canvas of their shelter. It catches all the sweet warmth of his eyes, and with a silent huff of mirth he pulls her hand up to his lips and kisses it.

“Good morning,” he says, husky and smiling in the daybreak. “Onward, then?”

Jyn nods. “On to Jedha.”


	2. Chapter 2

A day later, they can see Jedha City.

They’ve left the foothills behind and the road runs straight across the coastal plain before them. Far ahead, the ridge of the High City stands sharp against the early morning skyline, a jawbone toothed with towers where the long walls run down to the port. 

The sky is clear, a cold bright dawn and a smell of frost in the air. A good day to keep walking.

Inland, off beyond the silhouette of Jedha, a ragged white scar binds the horizon; a line of snow-capped peaks shading into the sky, far, far away. It’s been half a decade since Cassian saw the Copper Mountains but his heart lifts, and then aches, at the sight of home. One day, one day, he promised Jyn, and he asks himself now, is it possible, can he allow himself to hope?

But for this time at least their path lies dead ahead, for the city by the sea, and the grey-green shivering ocean beyond. No time for daydreams of homecoming.

It’s exposed, out on the plain, but at least the wind isn’t quite as bitingly cold as in the north. Jyn has wrapped her scarf round her head, with the ends shoved into the neck of her jacket. She’s riding. It was his turn, but he’d offered to trade, so he could be on foot for this last stretch of their journey; able to fight quickly and unhindered. She’d quirked an eyebrow when he said he’d walk, asked him “Feeling like you need the exercise?” and then blushed, and he didn’t need any heightened senses to know she was remembering their vigorous and delighted exercise of the previous night. He’d cast his eyes down in a cheerful play of modesty and then looked up at her under his lashes, and she’d softened in his gaze and begun to laugh. “Me too, Captain,” she’d admitted “Me too. Tonight, eh?”

“We’ll be in the city tonight. A proper bed!”

Looking up at her seated astride, with the bedroll and the canvas packed behind her and their saddlebags strapped shut. Determined as ever, his Jyn. He loves her ridiculously, loves every nudge and nuance of her, her brazen smirk and tender eyes, her fears and her facing of them, her confidence in herself, and in him. 

The horse, which officially has no name though he thinks of it as El Castaño for its colour, is patient with them. Walks at the touch of Jyn’s hand on the reins; halts at midday when they break out the supplies for a light meal; walks on, after. He imagines if El Castaño were human, it would be that long-suffering kind of friend who sighs and purports to find you baffling, but is always there just the same, loyal and enduring and good-humoured. A friend like Maia or Melshi. A friend like Kay. _May friendship bring us together again, may our fellowship be undimmed_.

In the end, neither of them mounts up after the meal. They go on side by side, holding hands, leading the horse; they will come to the city walking together, equals.

The previous day had been spent on many winding trails, coming slowly down from the hills behind Long Bay; coastal moorland like a snowless cousin of the land west of Jyn’s cottage, all poor grazing and thin scattered scree, and grey bedrock showing. But now they’re on a clear true road. Straight as a spear, slicing across the fertile red soil. To either side the land is cut-up by thousands of low earth banks and narrow ditches. Irrigation channels. 

Channels that should be glinting with water. 

It’s five years since he was last here, an officer in the royal guard, accompanying the Queen and Princess on a state visit, to take ship from Jedha Port. Then, it was spring, and this whole plain had been green with crops. He remembers the fuzz of sprouting wheat, orchards and meadows like jewelled carpets. The air sweet with moisture and the smell of blossom, green with the season, water everywhere. They’d travelled by barge from Yavine to the mouth of the Kassik River. He can see the levees he remembers, bordering the river like twin creases snaking across the flat farm land. Back then the river was smooth and steady, a band of polished light. It should be running high now, its channel full with snowmelt and winter rain, it should be shining, reflecting this quiet white sky. There should be colour and life on the great farmed plain even now in the dull depth of winter. This rust-red soil is famously rich, the Jedhan irrigation systems admired and copied in dry lands and highlands from Fest to Kassikia. There should be cold-season crops everywhere.

And there’s nothing. The land is faded red like a sun-bleached sail. Worn, dry, lifeless. The only thing the irrigation ditches hold is a grid of shadows, and where the Kassik once ran gleaming and winding through the fields, there is just another curve of shadows ahead.

It’s only when the road reaches right to the nearest loop of the river that they can see there’s any water at all; a very little, just in the bottom. Bare walls of red earth rise cracked and stark above. 

The bridge is reflected below them briefly as Cassian looks down. Slow-moving, slow-murmuring. A thin stream linking pools that stand dull and green with algae. The mighty Kassik, reduced to a humble creek. From the high point of the arched bridge, only a few green patches of farmed land are visible, extending alongside the bank from a spot away to the south. There’s movement there, and squinting he sees a group of people, working to mend the long arm of a water-lifter.

“Where’s the bloody river?” Jyn asks. It’s the numb voice of one who expects no answers. He replies for the relief of speaking, even though all he can say is “I don’t know.”

“It’s been a wet winter in the north,” she says. “Plenty of snow in the mountains. More than normal, I’d have said. Where in the seven hells has it all gone?”

“I don’t know,” Cassian says again.

The family with the water-lifter are hidden again as they leave the bridge behind, lost to view behind the blank red bulwark of the levee.

“This is an evil sight,” Jyn says. Her eyes scanning the barren plains, the marks of a long dry season.

It will mean hard times in Jedha. With the plains bare of winter crops and the main water source reduced to a creek, the city will be more dependent than ever on its maritime trade, on sea-lanes that the Empire controls.

They walk on in silence, gloved hands held tight. Cassian tries not to think about their two water skins, near-empty now, and the remains of their supplies. What price will food and water be, in a city where the next harvest may never come?

Perhaps the last one did not, either. He has no idea how long the drought has gone on.

_Why have we heard nothing of this? If the old mage knew aught of it, he told no-one at Red Crag. Bodhi seemed unaware of it. But when did he last come here? A herald may travel for many months and never see his home._

The walls of Jedha, and the broken-toothed line of the High City on its ridge, come nearer slowly, as their feet stir up the dust of the cold new desert.

**

By the time they’re close enough to see the gate, and the breached walls around it, the shadows have grown long. 

To anyone watching over the road, open and flat as it is, they must have been visible for a long time, yet their arrival seems barely to be remarked upon. The guards who check El Castaño’s saddlebags and ask a few desultory questions are dressed in Imperial white and black. They speak in the sullen, uninflected manner the Empire encourages in its servants. But they scarcely glance at the half-used food supplies Jyn and Cassian are carrying, make no note of the names they give, and swiftly wave them through the broken walls into the lower city. Whatever the state of Jedha and its people, clearly no-one looks for trouble to come by the inland road.

The only hint that the Occupation is anything more than just another dull posting to these soldiers marking time, is a row of handbills, pasted up inside the guard post. Peering sidelong at them Cassian can make out the headlines; names and crimes, dark words, murder, theft, treason. But no-one so much as glances to check if Joreth and Tanith Sward are listed there.

They walk on, into the occupied city.

The first street within the walls is half-ruined, with buildings to either side standing roofless and gutted. The stains of war are everywhere, even now almost four years after the fall of Jedha; blackened timbers rotting slowly, cracked walls discoloured by fire and overgrown with blue-spike, piles of rubble swept out of the roadway and left to grow weeds. Blue-spike seeds, like little dust-coloured feathers, drift up in puffs on a chilly breeze. Here and there someone has rigged themselves a shelter of boards and sacking amid the ruins, and under the broken arch of a doorway a bunch of persettia flowers lies wilting, a memorial to some long-dead family or friend.

Next to the doorway, on the wall of an uninhabitable ruin that might once have been a fine old house, there’s a line of the same warning handbills. Close-to like this, Cassian can see that each one lists the crimes of a single person, with a description and an offer of reward. Hand in your neighbour to the guard, earn enough to live on for a month. The Empire teaching the people they rule to turn on one another. 

_Blind Pirate Jarrus – wanted for murder, smuggling, terror!_ screams one poster; next to it another proclaims that Captain Hera of the ship _Ghost_ is wanted for theft and treason and can be identified by her green braids and arm tattoos. A huge bounty is offered for the capture of one Hondo Ohnaka, for piracy, slave-stealing and tax evasion. He blinks at the familiar name and charges.

The name on the next handbill on the wall is Bodhi Rook. 

Oath-breaker, false herald, traitor, the cold black words proclaim, above a basic description; the last lines pronounce punishment on anyone who shelters him or fails to surrender information on Bodhi’s whereabouts. 

Jyn draws nearer to him, tugging his arm to pull him away. Her lips are tight and there’s an angry line between her brows.

Bodhi is no oath-breaker, nor false to his herald’s vow. Neither is he a friend to the Empire. For now at least he’s safe, in Alderhaven, or at sea; but he’s on his way here. If he has any family in the city, they may already be captives. Joreth and Tanith may be of no interest, but at least one of their friends will be in constant danger here.

Cassian keeps close to Jyn as they walk on. Instinctively his other hand has gone to his side, to the pommel of the sword carried half-hidden under his long coat. The sword the soldiers didn’t even think to look for. _Thank God for their laxity._

The wrecked street is almost deserted. From one of the shanties a face looks out, pale in the shadows. Haunted eyes take in their arrival and look quickly away.

Just two corners further in, suddenly walls are full-height again, and roofs and windows battered but intact. There’s a market running the length of the next road, stall-holders apparently oblivious to the ruins just a street away. From nothing and desperation, suddenly they are surrounded by stalls and crowds, the strong smells of food raw and cooked and cooking, of spices and oil and fish fresh and not-so-fresh, of cabbage and rot, incense and paint, fuel-bricks and flowers and sweating humanity.

The change is unnerving; and the people here are acting as though there were nothing odd about it. He’s pretty sure it is an act, but it’s more uncomfortable even than the ruins, walking amidst this crowd and their determined normalcy.

The market street is cobbled underfoot and sheltered at intervals by gnarled shade trees; it climbs steadily through the slopes of the lower city, between shops and inns and storage yards where sellers and buyers haggle, and doors are kept shut, and guarded. Sometimes as they cross a lateral street there’s a glimpse of the ocean to the west, and the great arms of the harbour, walled to seaward and dotted with lighthouse beacons. Then the buildings close in again, standing two and three storeys high, overhanging, and dark, and often dirty. Narrow windows, with metal grilles at street level and solid shutters above; narrow doorways and alleys, and people standing in them with watchful eyes, that assess in silence and look away quickly.

Around some of the stalls – a bakers, a fried-food stand – the crowds press so close it’s hard to push by. At another, where two women with thin dark hands and tired mouths sell bunches of greens and warty tubers, a silent queue has formed, snaking back across the street. Patient thin faces waiting, anxious hands holding coins and paper money. The line blocks their uphill path entirely.

Cassian would prefer not to draw attention but they can only keep moving if he accepts having to murmur “Excuse me” as he taps shoulders and nudges backs. “Excuse me, excuse us please.” Jyn at his side seems to have shrunk down into her scarf. Each time he looks her way he sees her big clear eyes upturned, trying to watch every way at once. She grips El Castaño’s headstall tightly. There are no other horses to be seen, not even donkeys or mules, and the few carts are being pulled by hand.

Suddenly as they get through the line at the vegetable sellers Jyn looks sideways and her gaze catches on something. It was the last really busy stall before a small square, and the stalls here are much quieter, now the food market is behind them. Instead he can see clothing for sale, and candles and lamps at the next stall; and jewellery, bags, utensils in pottery and wood and metal. Jyn is staring longingly at a bookbinder’s stand, stacked with bound volumes; some with titles tooled in the leather binding, others propped open to show pages of fine blank paper, for notebooks and journals. She tears her eyes away with visible regret.

Mutters to him “I mislaid my book, you know, my – at the Crag. I should begin a new one.”

Her grimoire. Of course. He remembers the care she’d taken, day after day of copying spells laboriously. He can only imagine the years of stored knowledge it held, or how she must feel its loss.

“Do you want to go and look?”

Jyn shakes her head. “Later, maybe. Tomorrow? We need to find somewhere to stay the night first. The light’s going.”

It’s true; the late afternoon has dimmed as they climbed uphill and now they’ve moved into the shadow of the High City. With its sheer rock walls between them and the setting sun, the market and the lanes around it are already in near-dusk. The candle-seller has lit some of her wares, and here and there in the upper rooms overlooking the street there’s the glow of evening lamps behind closed shutters.

It isn’t as comforting a sight as it should be. For every family able to close their door and light a lamp, there seems to be another huddled in a doorway or an alley, or living under canvas in the ruins of a lost home. Even the everyday murmur of people shopping has an odd undercurrent, as though their whispers are alive, sliding away to hide behind the ruins. Jedha smells wrong, sounds wrong, breathes wrong.

“I agree.” He leans down a little, so near that he catches the scent of rosemary on her hair. “This town feels like it’s ready to blow, and soon.”

“But not today, I hope.” She tilts her face up to his, smiles as though they’re simply exchanging some jest or sweetness of lover’s talk. Impulsive, unable to resist the sight, Cassian leans in a little closer and presses a quick kiss to her lips. Just for verisimilitude, he insists to himself. They are Joreth and his bride, who’ve come to Jedha for a blessing. 

When he raises his head, her smile is still there, the happy creases about her mouth broadening.

And this is comforting, where the first lit lamps of dusk were not; to share a moment like this with her. No matter what, they are together, here in this city where every edge and nuance jars. He smiles back at her. His witch, his love.

“Let’s find an inn, and a stable for our friend horse here, and some place to eat,” he says.

“And then bed.”

“And a good night’s sleep.”

“That too,” Jyn says, her grin quirking sideways; and she reaches for him and takes him by the waist. Pulls him close. “All in good time, if you get my meaning, dear traveller. There are other things I want to do in a bed first.”

“Well, let’s go and find one then.”


	3. Chapter 3

The wind off the sea is icy, and smells of winter and of wild places, and of salty ocean weed. It blows in, fresh off the morning rooftops, as soon as Jyn opens the shutters. It’s bitter, almost as cold as the winds of Red Crag, but the seaweed note is too dominant for this to be anywhere but the coast.

Winter day or no, she smiles nonetheless as she looks back, at Cassian rousing himself from sleep in the wide bed of their room at the inn. He yawns, pushing off the covers and then pulling them up again with a grumble.

“Cold…”

“It is that,” Jyn agrees. The window has a glazed panel; she shoves the shutters right out and flicks down their hinged clips, then shuts the glass again quickly to stop the wind, and scoots back to bed. “Still winter here, for all there’s no snow. Warm me up?”

“Ugh, for my own health I’ll have to, won’t I? Brr, you’re freezing! – I can smell the damned winter-wind on you!” He bundles her in blankets again and wraps his arms tight around her. “Hah! I’ve got you now, Mistress Ice-feet.”

“Hah yourself. Captain Wolf-nose.”

Cassian kisses her softly. She snuggles into his side. “I know we have to get up but – just a few minutes more?”

“You said that yesterday,” he murmurs, coming in for another kiss. “In the dream, remember?”

“And now I’m saying it awake. In this lovely, big, comfortable, real bed.”

“It is a good bed,” Cassian agrees.

They lie curled among a stack of pillows, in homespun linen and heavy woven blankets, and a piecework quilt over all to keep them warm. The bedstead is a raised platform, almost like a giant box, the mattress a thick padding layer, luxuriously kind and cosy after weeks of a bedroll spread on the cold ground, a thin canvas holding off the frost. 

The window facing them looks onto a roof of slanting red tiles, and down a narrow alley towards the sea. Even with the glass closed, the calls of seabirds are loud outside, and the wind rattles the frame gently on its hinges. From time to time there’s a thump and a scrabbling of loud claws on the roof above as one of the birds lands. She watches as they swoop by, winging higher again. Soaring towards the unseen heights above.

Up here in the middle city the rock wall of the High City rises sheer, a hundred feet of red-gold sandstone, right behind their street and the inn of the Sign of the Crownless Man. It was just a bulk of shadow last night, a lurking silence Jyn could almost ignore. Today, she knows it will dominate their every step. This is why Jedha rose from humble merchantmen’s port to a great city; the great rock and the Moon Temple with its crystal-set walls, where countless pilgrims of every religion in the known world once gathered to hear the prophecies and pray for the blessings of its Guardians and brother monks, and the magic they wielded. Since times so long ancient as to be unremembered, the pilgrims came and the Temple blessed them, and the city grew rich and fair on the constant passing of the faithful, and the trade they brought. Until the summer five years ago, when the island Empire turned once more to expansion and conquest, for the sake of a fortune in kyber. When they tore down the walls of Jedha and trampled the courage of its people.

She remembers Bodhi’s mournful eyes, his pride and sorrow as he spoke of his home. The wrongs of Jedha didn’t seem quite real, back then, compared to her own struggles, and the immediate need of surviving a winter under siege. Now, in the shadow of that acropolis, with the ruins of once proud walls below, she burns with sudden shame. Here she is, comfortable in her lover’s arms, while poor souls camp in the shanty-town by the gate, and Bodhi’s name is bandied as that of a traitor.

_Am I doing the right thing? If we succeed, we weaken the Empire, and maybe we can give these conquered people hope again, and a chance to win back their freedom. But if we fail, we’ve done nothing for any of them; we may even strengthen that foul creature Vader’s forces. And the hand of the enemy will weigh all the heavier for our defiance…_

“Hey,” Cassian’s voice whispers. “I see you brooding there. Come back to me now, sweetness, don’t lose yourself thinking about tomorrow.” He presses another kiss, gentle on her hairline. “Today we keep busy in the here and now, yes?”

“Yes.” He’s right, of course he is. She wants to get on, to be busy, doing something, but they’d be crazy not to stay until Maia and the others get here. “It feels all wrong to need to fill in time. I’d thought to be out of here on the first ship we could find… Maybe we should visit the High City.” Now it comes to it, and they’re here in Jedha, the thought of the famous shrine is weirdly disturbing. Even saying its name makes her uncomfortable. So much blood has been shed for the sake of that wall of rock, so many have died trying to protect the Moon Temple with its crystals.

When she lets herself, she can feel it. Can almost hear it. There’s something waiting there above them, calling to her. It’s like a voice inside the rock itself. A pulse within the dead stone, a sound within the silence. But the only call she wants to hear is the one from across the sea. The one summoning her to the Black Isles. _Where my mother is. Please don’t call me elsewhere, don’t make me abandon her!_

She pushes the idea from her. A voice inside the rock? Fanciful even for a dream, and she’s wide awake. “We don’t know how long it’s going to take, to find a captain willing to take us to Ea’dhu. Us and three others, and a horse.” And even if they can find a ship, will the horse tolerate a sea voyage? She doesn’t want to sell him, it would feel like a small betrayal already, though he’s been with them less than a month.

“Is that something your magic can do?” Cassian asks.

Jyn blinks, and realises what he means; winces at the idea. “Use magic to make somebody carry us? I - I don’t know.”

“God above, no!” Cassian’s face is horrified. “I meant, can you find out how long it will take – how long we’ll have to search? Can you - see something not yet come to pass?”

Her face goes hot with relief and embarrassment. That wasn’t what he meant. How could she have imputed such an idea to him? Cassian of all men would surely never want her to compel a free being with her magic. “Read the future? I’ve never heard of a spell to do that. I wonder if it’s possible? If I had my books, and Saw’s, I wonder if I could find a way?”

She’s never seen a regular written spell for such a thing; but perhaps they do exist. Or maybe with the starfire she could. She’s kept from using the full force of that power since the night they escaped Red Crag. The enemy general had sensed her, had come to attack drawn by her magic. Fear of detection now stays her hand like a halter. Here in occupied Jedha she can only guess how much more risky it could be, to give herself away as a witch. 

And they would bring down God-knows-what, not only on themselves, but on Maia and Rue and Bodhi, on their harmless anxious landlady, the handful of other guests here at the inn, the tense silent people in the streets of Jedha…

And yet… to know the future - even such a minor thing as _How much time will this task require?_ – would it be useful, could it turn the tide of this struggle in their favour? - or would it kill all their hopes, with the poison of forbidden knowledge? 

“We need some place for Bodhi to hide himself safely when he arrives,” Cassian says, and she knows he’s changing the subject, tactfully letting go of an uncomfortable idea. _God be with him and bring him all blessings for his goodness._ “There must be ways a person who doesn’t want to be seen can creep into Jedha City. Think how lax those men at the land-gate were.”

“If I find myself with Maia in the dream-world again before this smuggler of theirs gets them here, I’ll warn her. About playing it simple with the gate-guards, and about Bodhi. Do you think we’ll see any more of those signs? I hated seeing his name there, among the pirates and slavers. He’s a brave man, he doesn’t deserve to be numbered with murderers.”

“I remember hearing the name Ohnaka back in Yavine,” Cassian remarks. He tightens his arm around her, offering comfort, strength, reassurance. “He was more a privateer than a pirate, and chiefly a man who kicked against authority. It wouldn’t surprise me if some of the slaves he’s accused of stealing end up mysteriously free…” He presses a quick kiss to her forehead. “Come, all’s not lost. We know Bodhi’s no false herald. If the Empire have branded him a criminal then I don’t doubt some of the others are just as innocent.”

“The Blind Pirate Jarrus sounds like someone from a children’s tale,” Jyn says, trying to make her voice sound light-hearted. “I’d like to think he could be quite a decent fellow. Someone who might quietly let a group of pilgrims take ship to Ea’dhu without too many questions.” She curls closer into his side, buries her face in his shoulder, hiding in his warmth. “But since we are supposed to be pilgrims, it might be noticed if we don’t act the part. We should spend our time as Tanith and Joreth would.”

 _My mother, I want to get to my mother, she’s trapped out there waiting for me to help her. I don’t want to be distracted from that goal._ But she knows Cassian is right. And he’s a good man, he doesn’t crow at her acknowledgment, simply agrees “Yes, we should play our role.”

Everything here feels like a role. It isn’t just the dissonance between the bustling street market and the obvious poverty, the tense, controlled faces in the streets. It isn’t just the half-ruined walls and the way everyone pretends they don’t see them, or the white-clad soldiers at the gates, the lines of posters proclaiming a hundred men and women as traitor or killer or hand of terror. It is, as he said yesterday, a city ready to blow. The sense of wrongness goes deep, through every street, through the air and the smell of salt on the sea wind. Right into the bedrock. Every thread of the Force in Jedha feels twisted wrong, and sore as a bruise on the bone. There may still be pilgrims coming to worship, and citizens trying to get on with their lives, but what should have been a nexus of holiness feels like a broken place, a gouged eye in the face of the world.

She will be glad when they leave. She says “Let’s get it over with, then,” and the words don’t even cover her disquiet.


	4. Chapter 4

The uncomfortable feeling only grows as the morning goes on. A breakfast of bread and preserved fruit and steaming hot tea should have made the whole world feel solid and set-to-rights again. But they set off to walk the Pilgrims’ Path, the long street that winds around the foot of the rock to the ceremonial entrance in the north, and at every yard Jedha seems to simmer, hotter and hotter though the wind is bitingly cold. 

They are supposed to be newly-weds seeking a blessing for their future. Supposed to be people living in joy. And there _is_ joy, she _is_ in love, it’s not faked at all; she is with Cassian who she loves and trusts more than she’d ever known possible, but… Jyn blinks and stares and bows her head, she tries to walk calmly, look happy, be unaffected, and it’s hopeless. The city sings with tension in the Force. Every movement, every step, jars in her skin.

Cassian stays close at her side. She can tell he too feels the strain, and there’s an odd comfort in that, although it hurts to sense his distress. She no longer needs even to reach out to know that the bond between them still holds. She can still feel him; and he, it would appear, can still smell her feelings, read the stresses, the worries, that race through her.

They walk. The sacred way is busy, but not bustling. Completely different to the market street they traversed yesterday; all the pedestrians now are walking in the same direction, at a steady pace, focussed on their upward progress through the middle city, their journey to the longed-for goal. The street is wide enough to accommodate far more people than it holds, this chilly winter morning. It’s like watching the last fragments of a long procession, the stragglers trailing along at the back, after some huge mass of people has already passed. The pilgrims swing prayer beads and tiny thimble-censers and bow their heads humbly as they move, but there are so few of them. The great processions of yesteryear have not marched up this holy way in half a decade.

Many of those walking are strangely dressed, visitors from afar, with rich cloaks, heavy furs, their heads veiled, even masked. They murmur reverentially, clicking their beads, and pause at each street corner, each wall-shrine and milestone. It’s hard to watch, knowing she uses the tragedy of their faith in this broken world as a mere disguise.

Jyn knows it’s best to feign the reverence of a genuine pilgrim. But the very air smells sour with tension and her nerves are pulled taut, her heart strained too high to play the act well. The threads of the Force are taut, they thrum, like a chant in the rock, like a bee-skep buzzing. It never ceases, makes her head ache; and she numbs herself to it and walks on. 

She keeps her head down. Her palms are sweating despite the cold. She moves as near to Cassian as she can in the shifting crowd.

Suddenly the road opens into a wide plaza, paved with cobbles and surrounded by shops selling votive cards and beads and candles. Seven streets meet, at the foot of a stairway as wide as a house, that climbs, dotted with praying, shuffling figures, up the seaward side of the acropolis. Some of the pilgrims drop to their knees, to climb creeping from step to step. The murmuring of prayers grows, louder and more constant, and there are more travellers coming from the other streets, converging on the ceremonial stair and the ruined buildings flanking it. Arcades, pillared halls, shrines where wall-paintings have been hacked and burned till only vestiges remain. Here an eye stares out, or a hand offering fruit; a tree there, a rose, a pillar-altar, the feet of a lion. All around, the plastered stonework is disfigured and blackened by fire.

The gate to the lower city, where they entered the previous day, had been rebuilt and strengthened, a brazen symbol of Imperial authority straddling the road and mocking the slighted walls. But the gate to the holy High City is a scorched wreck. A few broken columns remain, of what must once have been a vast covered colonnade above the stairway, giving shade and shelter to all comers. Marble column drums lie scattered where they fell and stumps of stone protrude from the pavement. Just one column is standing to what might once have been its full height; a splinter, a severed limb, rearing into the sky.

Not one figure in Imperial white and black keeping watch over the pathetic remnants of shrines, the dogged last pilgrims amid these ruins of devotion. There are no guards. The arrogance of that settles in her mind and hangs there, heavy as a weight hooked on skin. The Empire doesn’t need to remind Jedha of its subjugation any longer. They know their hold is absolute.

There’s rubble piled on either side; heaped up in the roofless chambers of the side halls, roughly cleared from the central stariway so that the pilgrims can pass. And as they pass, another sound rises, adding itself to the whispered chorus of prayer, the clicking of tally beads, shuffle of movement; weeping, soft, choked, and insistent. 

It’s a stiff climb, the marble treads set high so that each step requires a hard push. The walkers press on steadily while those who chose to crawl must labour up, pulling themselves with visible effort. Jyn’s breath is coming fast by the time she reaches the top. It’s nothing like climbing a hill, nothing like walking at her own pace, pausing to admire the view if she wants. This is a formal ascent, a ceremony she repeats as millions must have done in the past, farmers and kings, outlanders and locals. The mourning figures climb to either side of her and the grief of their voices and rhythm of their feet blur together, discordant, to accompany and heighten her confusion. 

She’s supposed to be one of them, Cassian is supposed to be one of them. She’s a witch, hiding in plain sight amid the devotees of a faith that once upheld her kind and then rejected them; and is now itself in ruins.

She hauls herself up another step, heartsick and grateful for Cassian’s hand in hers. They reach the crest of the staircase.

The colonnade must once have finished here in another gateway, for the broken stumps line up to either side and the entrance passes between them. In the open space beyond, the first thing to be seen is more destruction; great statues cast down and smashed. Some are still recognisably human figures, with faces obliterated and hands broken away. Others might once have been horses and bulls, and giant clawed creatures gripping the rock before them. She sees the deep undercutting of drapery or furled banners, lying across fallen stone bodies; sees once-proud necks, now headless, smashed limbs, strange emblems scarred by axe-blows. Everywhere the red-gold native stone is stained by fire and weathered from exposure. The sky overhead is clouded, the light stark and grey. There’s not a single weed, not even a tuft of grass, to bring life to the relentless destruction. 

Ahead, past the wrecked statues and across a flat paved area, a platform as wide as the staircase is stacked high with what she takes at first for carved stones. It might once have been an altar. But the stones are skulls, of beasts and of men.

The desecration has been thorough, and systematic, and brutal, and great care has been taken to make sure no-one passing this way can ever forget it. 

Beyond, on the highest point of the acropolis, rears the silhouette she remembers seeing from the road, the steep pyramidal form of the great Moon Temple. That at least it seems is simply too vast, too bulky and mighty, simply to have been thrown down. But Cassian at her side sucks in a hiss of shock and mutters “Dear God, it’s been stripped.”

“Stripped?” she whispers back.

“It was covered in crystal. Every inch. It used to glitter, it was dazzling. They’ve taken every piece.”

They draw still closer to one another, his arm going around her, their sides pressed together. To either side the line of pilgrims passes, crying and praying, crawling and puffing for breath.

The plateau is exposed and the wind sighs bleakly among the ruins. The skulls on the altar grin at Jyn. Their empty eye sockets pour out darkness, it drags at her mind as they make their way on up the slope.

_This is the work of the people who burned Yarrow’s village, who sacked and enslaved Yavine, who slaughtered my father and Saw and forced my mother’s magic to their own ends. This is what they do, for power, and to create fear. They haven’t stopped. They never will stop._

_Not unless we stop them._

Her free hand is at the breast of her coat, pressing on the fabric, feeling hard edges and cool surfaces, the movement of the precious crystals she wears touching one another. The piled skulls are behind her now; ahead is the desecrated Temple, and a line of half-ruined buildings where traders have set up stalls. There’s incense for sale, small lumpy cones of it, cheap handmade stuff, and rough little dishes to burn it in. More crude pottery, cups this time, at a water-seller’s stall, and there’s a seller of yellow flowers, and a stall of tiny clay models; moon crescents, rayed discs, figures.

Across the wide open space a few more broken ruins are scattered. Vestiges of other structures, broken statue bases, shrines, priests’ houses, she cannot tell. Past the Temple, a long wall has been thrown down, the plateau beyond it littered with burned tree stumps. Here and there the very rock itself has been carved open, and rock-cut chambers that might have been tombs or underground chapels have been left gaping, open to the air.

The pilgrims carry their water, their flowers and incense and little votive figures, to the edge of the pits and cast them in. 

_Offerings. We need to make offerings._

She’s never made an offering in her life. Has said the word _God_ , the words _the Force_ , countless thousands of times, but not once since her childhood taken part in any formal ceremony of religion. Only magic, and the despairing prayers of a life spent hiding. The ritual blindsides her; gestures that look empty yet must be laden with meaning, for those who know, for those who believe.

_Do I believe? Do I understand any of this?_

_Cassian has been here before. He will know what to do._

The offerings themselves look pretty poor. A splash of water poured out, a single flower. Meagre as the muffled voices and stifled tears. Those praying figures circling the rock-cut pits keep their eyes down, as though even to look up at the sky were too much risk.

“Do you have any coin?” Cassian asks in a murmur. His eyes are flicking to the sorry line of stalls, and she nods, fumbling into her coat pocket to dig out coppers and silvers. With a quick squeeze of her fingers he takes a couple of coins and moves toward the flower seller.

Around Jyn’s neck, the kyber crystals feel warm suddenly, and heavy, far heavier than when she put them on this morning. Her own stone, her mother’s, the stones of the lost witches, that Saw gave her. Something like a pulse beating inside them, throbbing on her breast. A command, a call; and the hum of the Rock takes form suddenly. Not in sound, like Lyra’s message, but words felt in the heart. 

_Come, come, you have to come. Come up, come to this place._

_Your offering too will be given, your prayer too will be heard._

It’s like a whisper, almost beyond her hearing, a light just over the edge of shadow. Beneath the winter sky, the low grey cloud, the seabirds beating by on the wind, Jyn begins to climb again, impelled up towards the hulk of the Temple itself. Haunted, called, a thing like doubt or hunger tugging her across the barren plateau, past the horror of ruined shrines and weeping celebrants.

_Come, come, I hear you, I feel you, come!_

At the lip of the last and deepest pit a lone figure sits hunched before a tumbledown shelter of canvas and rubble that leans against the ruined wall. Grey hair in matted locks, a face that has fallen past serenity, into a place where death and peace dwell in deepest meditation. Unblinking dark eyes stare down, into the hollow place below him. Jyn comes to the edge of the pit and the man doesn’t even glance her way. He goes on staring down, and the whispering voice sings in her mind and licks against her fingertips, _Yes, yes, come, you hear me, I hear you, here, yes, here!_

She looks into the pit.

Eyes without sight look back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hapy New Year, everyone!


	5. Chapter 5

Jyn starts away from the edge of the void. The stones are loose and crumbling; where some of the offering pits are like ruined chambers, this one is a hole blasted into the very bedrock of the Holy City. Deeper and more violating than any tomb or cellar; the heart of Jedha itself torn open.

In the Rock, a pit, and in the pit, a creature. Blind-staring eyes, blue-white as Kassikian porcelain, and a fanged mouth that smiles darkly at her. Wide-set nostrils in a velvet muzzle, a striped and spotted coat of black and chestnut-red, a long crest; and springing from the ridge of the spine, vast furled pinions the colour of blood and ochre and burning coals. The nostrils flare, savouring the air, and from the curled-back lips a voice like brass says “Ahh, ahh, hrrrhhh!” Almost a purr, if dragons or gryphons purred; almost kindly, almost homely, were it not the voice of banked-down fire, and power in bondage. “Ahrrhhrrrhh!” – it’s a roar, but soft-throated, without threat, and then – words. “A glimpse of your future, youngling, hrrrh, for one of those stones you wear!”

It spoke to her. She doesn’t even know what it is; but it spoke to her. 

Human words, from those fantastical lips. Or she is suddenly gone mad.

It is huge, the creature, and its wild mouth smiles from the depths of the blasted rock, from the pit. Benevolent as a lion in a trap. The shaft is deep, sheer-walled; and the great wings are folded, making no attempt to fly. Chains of dense black iron bind the beast’s forefeet and hind feet to the rusty bedrock.

“Hrrrhh, yes,” it says. It sounds wry, unworried by its imprisonment. Almost amused. “I’m speaking to you, yes.”

When a winged monster bares its pale teeth and speaks to you, a being out of the realm of myth and folk tales, what place is left for reason, for the word _nonsense_ , the words _mad, unbelievable_? Madness or no, the brass-tongued beast is talking to her. Jyn sees no reason not to reply. It’s the logic of a dream. “How do you know I’m wearing a stone?”

“Ha, hrrrh, more than _one_ stone I sense. Sweet scent of many crystals. What do you know of kyber crystals, youngling?”

There’s a movement in the corner of her eye and she starts and turns, to find the man who had been deep in meditation has turned and is watching her, with his head on one side. For a moment inside one sleeve she glimpses the haft of a knife, before he shifts his hand, and it’s hidden again. 

She thinks of lions, or eagles, dragons; of an old predator sizing her up, but holding back the strength of claws and the fire of wrath, lightly, as if such control is the simplest thing in the world.

She says “My mother told me they’re a source of power.”

The creature shifts its chained feet below, cocking its head on one side as well. Considering her answer, or her very self. Exchanging a sightless look with the silent man beside her. “True,” it breathes. “True. Delicious power. Lost to us now. But you came, you came, so the world turns.”

Baffled and moved despite herself she asks “Who are you?”

“Hrrrh, my name is Chirrut Imwe. I am the last Guardian of the city.”

“He is the last Guardian,” says the man with the matted hair, echoing him “and I am _his_ guardian.” His voice is deep and curiously measured, as though he’s unaccustomed to speech, and careful of his words. “You are well come to this place.”

_Not **welcome** , but **well come**._

_And this is the last Temple Guardian of Jedha, the one Bodhi spoke of. The one saved only as a warning to the citizens, of how completely their world could be destroyed._

Jyn shivers.

“Guard your heart of kyber. Guard your power well, youngling,” says the Guardian, still gazing up at her sightlessly. _Chirrut, it has a name, Chirrut. And not it but **he** ; his companion said **he**. _

The companion bows his head courteously to her, and turns back to his meditation again.

“I do – guard it, I mean.” If these two are the last keepers of the Temple how is it that not one of the pilgrims come to them? Everyone is casting offerings into the empty pits. Are they so afraid? She stares back down the slope at the crowds, weeping and praying. Dark Jedhan heads bowed, and faces and head-dresses from every corner of the earth, all swept up in their devotions. But nobody has come up here. 

Nobody except Cassian; he’s at her elbow suddenly, holding a handful of the yellow flowers and a shallow clay cup, taking in her companions with a quick and assessing eye. “Jyn. We need to make our offerings.”

“Hrrrh, yes, you must cast down your gifts. Lost gifts, lost like all our fates.” The Guardian turns his head away and hunkers down. “Farewell, youngling, starfire child. Go wisely until the morning.”

Cassian’s face turns impassive. She suspects her own has gone white. How did he know to call her that? _Starfire child_ …

On impulse she takes the flowers and the cup of water from Cassian and lays them at the meditating man’s feet. He doesn’t blink, eyes already rapt into inwardness again. But tucked in the sleeve of his robe the knife-handle catches the light; and deep in his pit, the Guardian Chirrut Imwe purrs like a dreaming cat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, yes, Chirrut is - different in this AU!  
> I hope readers won't mind this; I know it's a pretty weird thing to change a character into an altogether different species. I've been trying to drop hints since halfway through "By stardust and moonlight" that in this world the Guardians weren't human beings at all, so I hope it isn't too much of a shock.   
> Anyway, if you're not up for Mystical Winged Prophetic Creature!Chirrut, by all means stop here; and thanks for having read thus far.  
> Apologies too for the short chapter but there's a pov change here, so it makes for a better break-point than having chapters skipping pov halfway through from now on.


	6. Chapter 6

_Well, that was unexpected. And unnerving. Why did he call her that?_

Jyn hasn’t spoken again. She lets Cassian lead her back across the open plateau, away from the blind Guardian and the last faithful brother monk. She turns just once, to look back at the silhouetted figure behind them, but keeping her hand tightly locked in his, as though touch can provide comfort against the alienness of the morning’s encounter, or help ward off the danger around them.

He knows they must stand out; they are the only pilgrims leaving the holy site so soon. But it cannot be helped. The ruins and the muttering, sobbing crowds unnerve him. He wants out of here. His heart is beating too fast, a quiet panic tenses his shoulders, keeps his free hand ready at the hilt of his sword.

If the tension in the market last night was uncomfortable, this is far worse; that was a bruise, this is an open wound. It hums in the air, in the faces passing them; and comes off Jyn in waves, stress and confusion piling on top of one another. Her hand is cold and sweaty. But she keeps moving.

By the time they reach the foot of the great stairway he’s no longer sure where he’s guiding her, or she him. An odd side effect of the strange union of minds that pulls between them. They walk on quietly, crossing the open square. Finally, as they turn off the plaza into a narrow lane, she speaks. “He said he was a Guardian.”

“That’s right. What’s left of one, anyway.” _That tragic sight, dear God have mercy. What kind of magic could ruin living eyes like that?_

“He knew I was wearing –“ she touches the front of her coat without saying the word. Kyber crystals, her secret treasure, the focussing stones that bring down power into a witch’s hand. That she has used for so much more even than the traditions of magic allow. “You’ve been here, you’ve seen their kind before,” she says. “How did he know what I am?”

The memories rise, shining, glorious; but they are just ghosts. “They were all like that.” The Eldest Guardian and the Father Abbot, greeting Queen Breha. The exchange of flowers and blessings, the gracious words, the hand-clasp of peace. So long ago. “They had the gift of prophecy, and reading hearts, seeking what was hidden or lost. They were – I can’t describe it. Majestic. Awe-inspiring. Even the youngest ones could sense things not seen.” He has to take another breath, because the words are choking him. “Oh, Jyn, this place was so beautiful once. Great gardens all around the Temple. White columns, arcades and statues, shady resting places for the pilgrims. And Guardians flying above, day and night. An honour guard in the heavens. When they flew by moonlight, they looked like great spirits of light. They were astonishing. Seeing that last one, imprisoned like that –“ He can’t go on.

How it must tear Bodhi’s heart; must tear the heart of every Jedhan. Their faith desecrated; the ancient Temple, their sacred charge for all the world, their mystical Guardians, their holy places, all of them insulted and destroyed. Worse even than the sack of Yavine. This unmended wreckage is like having your enemy’s power and your own powerlessness shoved up in your face, every day, with no hope of escape or a new beginning. The sole purpose, to force you to despair.

“It’s heart-breaking,” he manages at last. A feeble understatement. But Jyn nods with eyes full of grief. 

“That Guardian, though,” she says after a moment. “That Chirrut. He’s pretty impressive, even blind and stuck in a hole. Him and his companion both. They didn’t feel like beings who’ve given up.”

“The man with him was a Brother Monk, once. I recognised the clothing.”

Just as he’d recognised the clothes of so many of the pilgrims. All the races of the world were represented there. He’d looked around him and seen fair hair and dark, complexions milk-white as a northerner or ebon as Kay’s; tattoos, facial piercings, even the lime-stiffened manes of Kassikia. 

So even now, the pious continue to come from far and wide. _People are tough, hope endures, though God alone knows how when their shrine is ruined and insulted and the Empire will take the revenue they bring and then spit in the face of their faith._

He’s still walking beside Jyn; they’re wandering aimlessly now, each as lost as the other. Not going back to the Crownless Man, but not finding another path yet. Just moving through the streets of high stone houses, walking on round the foot of the High City, in the cold. 

At the end of a side-street the sea gleams down a long flight of flagstone steps. Little flecks of light glinting between the hulls of moored-up ships and the bustle of distant passers-by.

It would be good to do something that cheered the spirit, to restore their tenuous hopes, after this morning. He wraps his fingers round hers. “Come on. Let’s go down to the harbour.”

They turn into the next stepped street, and the smell of the sea rises to meet them.

Within a few yards, the lane and alleys are poorer and more cramped. In the quarter round the inn many of the houses have balconies and rain-awnings, glass in their windows, carved door-frames. Here the doorways are lower, windows smaller and unglazed; walls are bare stone or flaking plaster, and only the central ridge of the road surface is cobbled. But tucked on windowsills or yard walls he sees pots of herbs, and here and there an old vine creeps up a wall, or a crock of winter-flowering bulbs brings the soft colour and scent of life. Cables strung across the street overhead carry washed clothes and drying nets. The sea-smell gets steadily stronger, fish and salt and weed; and then woodsmoke as pungent clouds billow out of a smokehouse on an upper storey while two children play marbles on the stoop below. A woman sits in a yard stringing bait onto long-lines and chatting quietly to a man with a basket of bread on his back. Another man mends fishing nets in his doorway. 

It’s cold and poor, but alive in a way the holy sites were not, with an ongoing getting-on-with-it of life instead of the perpetual mourning of the pilgrims. 

A rat scuttles from under a plank door to dash in front of them and moments later a cat squirms out after it and darts in pursuit with whiskers bristling in excitement. Prey and hunter vanish again through the arch of an open cellar as Cassian and Jyn pass, and the man mending his nets laughs.

And then the steep street levels out and debouches onto a wide quay of red granite; a harbour and a crowd, and beyond them the broad face of the sea, shining, ever-moving. Stalls, people, wares stacked at the water’s edge or piled for transport; hoists and cranes and porters and high-wheeled wagons, mules in harness braying and burly folk hauling handcarts. And tens, dozens, hundreds of ships. The sky is crowded with masts and cables, the wiry voice of rigging sings in the windy air, amid the crack of wheels, shouts of stevedores, scream of gulls. 

Directly opposite their lane, the quayside is lined with the small boats of a fishing fleet. Low-built deckhouses, piled nets and the high stern rig of night-fishers; torch-mountings, trailing lines, stacks of flat basket-traps. Brawny haulers and net-wives selling the catch over the side, shouting their wares, _Fresh caught today, come and buy!_ Green-fin, bellfish, red skipper; big-claw crab, marsh crab, coast crab, fan crab. Clams and screwshell cones. Broken shells underfoot, fish-scales glinting on the wet stone. 

Dozens more cats hover at the margins and the sea birds stoop and clamour for scraps and offal. 

With a soldier’s instinct Cassian remarks on another thing, quieter and more furtive than the cats. The fishing spears and tridents, the boat hooks, harpoon throwers, gutting knives. The fisher-folk carry no swords, yet there are weapons everywhere, hidden in plain sight. 

Further along the quay he can see larger craft tied-up, traders and coasters, along a jetty that divides the great harbour almost in two. Here at least there are Imperial soldiers standing guard; and in the outer harbour float line after line of their war galleys, each with its single central mast and double bank of oars. The entire southern quay beyond is lined with vast ship-sheds where men labour on more galleys, and above them the towers of the sea wall rear up against the sky. 

He counts thirty warships. Ten catapults on the wall. A long barracks, big enough to house thousands of galley slaves and troopers. There, contained almost to unobtrusiveness, but unmistakable, is the mailed fist of the Empire.

Yet the fishing fleet are armed to the teeth, the guards on the land-gate admitted two travellers without even checking their bags or their business, under a wall plastered with the names of wanted men and women; the entire ruined Temple precinct was unguarded, with its weeping shuffling pilgrims and blind, amused, watchful Last Guardians. The landward walls have been left in ruins, to flaunt their defeat in the Jedhans’ faces; but the Empire grows sloppy in this long occupation, and over-sure of their might. 

Could the city be retaken, with a surprise attack and a determined force, and the help of its own people? Surely Jedha would rise up, if the chance were there?

Something seems to have revived Jyn’s spirits; the cold fresh air and punchy sea smells, the bustle of life, maybe the prospect of finding passage out of here. She tugs on his hand, pulling him towards the main wharf. “Those there, the big boats – maybe one of them will be sailing soon?”

It looks to him as though many of them are undergoing repairs; he can see masts that are stepped, yardarms removed or stripped of all rigging, even some craft right out of the water, hoisted onto blocks so that workers can scrape the hull clear of weed and barnacles. 

But still, it’s worth asking. They have to begin somewhere. Cassian nods, and lets her lead him round the harbour, towards the traders’ ships.


	7. Chapter 7

It’s a steady refrain of no’s, amused smiles, and bluff good humour.

_Large sea-goers like our girl here need a power of work done by winter, lad. We won’t make another long voyage till the spring. Bless you for a land-liver, we’ve barely begun on all the maintenance she needs! Big carrack like mine, not worth the risk. Mother Ocean can turn nasty in less time as it takes you to spit. Our trade is ‘cross open seas, and that’s fair-weather work, always has been, always will be._

Again and again he hears that there are a few who will sail in any weathers, any season, though nobody names any particular captain, nor any specific ship. Light craft running on the quiet, those with special customers for their goods, customers who are demanding, and hard to please. No-one it seems can quite bring themselves to say it out loud but the implications are clear – smugglers, like the one bringing Melshi and Maia and Bodhi south. And no-one who isn’t a smuggler will contemplate a winter voyage. Just as Bodhi said.

“If the gold’s heavy enough,” one sea-wife with the blue eyes of the north says “you might find a master willing; one of those small craft maybe, or a fisher looking to gamble. Locals are crazy-proud of their water-handling. And as for those reef-folk, from off Lothal way, why they’re even worse…” A winding motion near her ear, as though she’s spooling her own brains onto a windlass.

Outside the harbour-mouth the sea is steady today, grey and rolling but not high enough to send spray over the outer mole. It’s hard to credit there’s so much danger. He’s seen the nearest peaks of the Black Isles from the Temple rock in clear weather, not fifty miles away as the gull flies. But everyone speaks of the changeability of the seas; and that single term, reef-folk, carries a cargo of its own. If there are reef-folk, there must be reefs. 

It all makes perfect sense, and yet – under the eyes of the Empire’s war-fleet, and their oh-so-careless guards, how many shipmasters would be blithe to say _Aye, I’ll take on a risky voyage on the say-so of stranger. No harm on drawing attention to myself, my ship, my crew_ …

He presses Jyn’s hand in his as they trail down the main wharf to the stone quay and on, heading towards the fishing harbour again.

She flicks a glance up at him and squeezes his hand back. The cold sea air is making the tip of her nose red.

“Maybe we should wait for Bodhi after all, to try and arrange this,” he murmurs. “It sounds as though he was right about everything.”

She’s turned steadily more silent as the morning passed, and he still senses a disquiet coming off her. Her spirits had seemed to brighten in the harbour, but it seems it was only temporary, not enough to conquer the feeling of wrongness haunting her. She’s been thoughtful ever since their strange encounter by the Temple ruins. Since the blind Guardian and his brother monk singled her out. 

He’s becoming steadily more aware of the cold. It licks at his skin, seeps inside his coat at neck and wrists. Even with the good coat he’d bought before they set off, the winter seems to bite harder here by the waterside. His hands are bare and he has no hat. His knees and ankles feel stiff; if he had to run now, he would be clumsy and slow, his wolf agility a thing of the past. 

And he’s hungry. Breakfast was several hours ago and the cold salty air has his belly grumbling. 

_How little time it’s taken me, to become used to three meals a day and warm clothing once again._

Jyn presses his hand again and he can feel her gathering herself to be bright and certain again. “Well, so,” she says staunchly. “At least we’ve started asking around, eh?”

He smiles at her determination. Looks down, at their clasped hands, and back up at the harbour. And freezes.

From the deckhouse of the nearest ship, a tall, heavily-built man in fisherman’s overalls stares out at them. His grey-whiskered face is tight, a silent frown of anger long-ingrained.

Instinctively Cassian shifts to cover Jyn’s flank. His hand moves closer to the hidden sword hilt. In the corner of his eye he can see Jyn readying herself too, fingers poised to shape some power out of the air. “Why are you watching us?” he demands.

“I’m a-minding me own business,” says the grizzled man. “What’re you _asking around_ about?”

Jyn lowers her hands slowly. Looks up at him, as though she expects him to take charge. 

“We’re just travellers, looking for onward passage,” Cassian says, trying to project innocent goodwill.

“Where you trying to get?”

“Just to Ea’dhu.” 

“Ha. You won’t find anyone making that crossing for a while.” He twists his head, a sideways nod towards the outer harbour. “Bosses don’t like it.”

“So we’ve gathered.” It’s the first clear hint they’ve had that the lack of winter crossings is in part due to Imperial restrictions on sailing. And for all his growly face, the man smells right somehow. Cassian takes a deep breath, and essays a cautious “We’re not really interested in what the Empire likes, you know?” Easy enough to pass that off as naïveté if need be. He hopes.

“Huh. Really.” The stranger stares him down for a moment and then abruptly turns away, saying “Wait here” over his shoulder as he heads below decks.

Jyn is frowning after him, her posture tensed though there’s no way yet of knowing if the stranger is indeed hostile. Cassian looks over the ship quickly before the man can return. She’s slightly bigger than the rest of the fishing fleet, with a long, narrow shape and a built-up stern. Rigged fore-and-aft, just like the round-bellied fishing boats, but there’s a pair of spare booms lashed alongside the hull that look suspiciously as if they could be hoisted to form yard-arms. A flexible rig and a hull built for speed. Interesting.

There are blue eyes painted either side of the bow, beneath the name _Caleb’s Love_ in large letters. The timbers around the ship’s name all look strangely bright, as if they’ve been scrubbed clean, or repainted recently.

A figure appears in the open hatch to the deckhouse; a woman barely taller than Jyn, looking out with mild eyes. The burly man is behind her, muttering urgently in her ear, but she smiles and hushes him after a moment. “Let’s just ask them instead of making assumptions, hmm?” she murmurs. 

She steps out into the wintry daylight, confidant, her expression good humoured. She’s slim and brown, and wears a complicated head-wrap, and heavy canvas overalls like her companion, over a long-sleeved knitted jersey. “So,” she says; warmly, kindly, and with a tiny note of steel. “Travellers heading for the Isles, eh? A hard time of the year to choose for it.”

“We’ve had good weather so far, no snow since the far north,” Jyn says amiably, watching, very still. “We came down from the mountains, from the False Larch River country.”

She’s trying to sound out the strangers; just as he suspects they’re also trying to do. 

“And now you hope for a ship to take yourselves and your goods over to the rich markets of the Empire before spring, and steal a march on the competition?”

Cassian shakes his head. “No goods, just ourselves. And our friends, when they get here. We’re not traders, just five people travelling together.”

“What business have you in Ea’dhu, then, if you’re not traders?” The man; sounding grumpy, and then injured, as the woman hushes him again, “Well, I don’t trust ‘em, Captain, and nor should you.”

“Pff. I choose who to trust and when, and why, and this is still my ship, Zeb.” That calm smile, and she goes on “What means of payment might you have to offer?”

“We have some money,” Cassian says cautiously, mentally tallying their resources and suddenly wondering if there’s going to be enough. Anxious, and then angry at the note of doubt creeping into his own words.

Jyn cuts in as he hesitates, to add “And I’m sure we’ll come by more when we get to Ea’dhu. My mother is there, you see. We’re going to see her.”

“Touching,” the woman says dryly. “But I’m sure you can imagine, it takes more than family and loving thoughts to carry a ship across this sea channel. Not all Jedhans like to sail to the Black Isles, these days. Not all of us are even permitted to.”

Cassian bites back the words _Neither of you are locals_ ; it can’t help to challenge her, for all he’s quite certain that these are no Jedhan accents. There’s something concealed here, but he can’t quite pin it down. The woman smells trustworthy, yet is not telling the truth.

“I promise you, we will pay our way,” Jyn says beside him. “We have to get to Ea’dhu!”

“Such a hurry to visit your mama,” sneers the man.

Jyn stares him down. “I haven’t seen her for a long time.” 

“Yet you’re waiting for your friends first?” the woman queries.

“We need their help,” Jyn says. “Just as we need yours.” She looks round at Cassian, and her eyes are worried but hopeful. Very slowly she reaches to the opening of her jacket, and with a tug she pulls one of the cords round her neck, and draws out one of the kyber crystals; the smallest one, the one she’d told him had belonged to a child-witch called Sors. She holds it up. “If we don’t have enough money, perhaps you’ll accept this as part-payment?”

The man’s eyes widen and he mutters an oath, but the woman merely straightens, and glances very quickly to left and right, before holding out her hand in welcome suddenly. “Well now. Come aboard, friends. I’m sure we can come to a mutually satisfactory arrangement. My name is Kanera Dume and I’m the Captain of this ship. This is my first mate, Zeb Garrer.”

There’s still a guarded smell about her; but no longer one of mistrust. Whatever it is she’s hiding, it isn’t from them. Judging by _Zeb Garrer_ ’s ill-concealed start of annoyance, Cassian guesses it isn’t his real name. Perhaps _Kanera_ isn’t hers, either.

He hands Jyn up onto the gunwale, and steps aboard after her. “Thank you.” 

Kanera Dume leads them to the aft hatch, and a wooden stairway into the hold. As soon as they are below decks she turns to face them. “That crystal, I assume you know what it is? Best not to flash a treasure like that on the common dock-side. The people of Jedha are sensitive about such things.”

Cassian thinks of the glittering Temple of the past, and its pitted and desecrated walls today. “I promise you, this stone was not stolen from them.”

“You’ll need more evidence than mere words, I’m afraid. Kyber is sacred here and its theft is a serious matter. But no Imperial would have a stone fitted like that, for a necklace, so – who are you, and why do you wear this?”

Jyn is unfastening her coat, with her eyes fixed on the other woman’s face. She draws back the fabric to show the cluster of pendants she’s wearing. Bright crystals of many colours and two clear ones, hanging together round her neck with the cords entangled.

“My mother gave me this one,” she says in a tone of stern calm, touching the first stone as Kanera stares “and my adoptive father the rest.” She hesitates for a fraction of a second and goes on. “His name was Saw Gerrera. Maybe you’ve heard of him?”

Zeb whistles under his breath. “Heard of him? The old lion? Girl, we’ve worked with him! Never knew he had a kid. How is the old bastard?”

Jyn closes her eyes for a second, a flinch she barely controls, and Cassian says hastily “He’s dead. Killed by Imperial troops this midwinter just past.”

There’s a long pause; Jyn buttoning her coat again, Zeb settling his arms akimbo and staring at his captain; Captain Kanera herself considering, with her head on one side.

“And this mother of yours,” she says at last. “Is she real, or just a convenient reason to visit the Black Isles?”

“Oh, she’s real.” Jyn’s voice is briefly weak with bitterness. “I haven’t seen her since I was a child. She’s been a captive of the Empire for years. We only just learned where she’s being held. We’re just trying to help her.” She folds her arms across her chest and stares back, an expression of blunt determination which the pain in her eyes only makes more grim.

“I see.” Kanera scratches her head through her scarf. The movement looks clumsy, as if her fingers aren’t used to the thick cloth wrapped round her hair. “Well now. I appreciate the risk you’re both taking. Trusting me, and Zeb here, with something like this. These things you’ve told us could condemn you both, if they were heard by the wrong people.”

“I know that. But they won’t be,” Jyn says. “I know you’re trustworthy. I can feel it.” She looks round at him and smiles faintly. “We can smell it.”

Zeb snorts, but Kanera smiles back. “That sounds like the kind of thing my boy Ezra would say. Very well. Come through to the cabin. I’ll make some tea and you can tell me more.”

As she leads the way, she adds over her shoulder “And whatever money you have, I’m sure will be more than enough. No need to trade one of the old lion’s focussing stones.” Her grin is suddenly kindly, and mischievous. “Ezra already has one and so does my husband, so we’re all good for kyber. And perhaps it would be simpler if you were to call me Hera.”


	8. Chapter 8

The main cabin lies in the ship’s stern, with a long glazed window that runs the full width of the transom, and a wooden table let down from the wall by a hinge. Three simple chairs with rush seats are tucked underneath, and a fourth one is hanging up nearby, fastened out of the way above head-height with a buckled strap. A kettle of water is already heating on a small iron cook stove that perches in a tray of sand against the partition, and the window glass is half-blotted with steam.

Someone has swept an arm across the condensation, recently enough that drips are still sliding down. The cleared patch in the glass looks out towards the Imperial barracks and the lines of galleys in the southern harbour.

They’re keeping an eye on the Empire’s fleet. Spying, or just watchful? Is that why Captain Hera gave them a false name?

It’s warmer below decks. Jyn sinks gladly onto one of the proffered seats. It’s hard to pin down why, but this has been a disturbing morning. At the back of her mind, the hum of the Rock murmurs, never quiet silent, and the haunting voice of Chirrut Imwe echoes inside it, saying _Ahhh, hhrrhh, little youngling, starfire child..._

He isn’t inside her head, exactly, but he hasn’t vanished, either. Something very strange is happening, here in the city by the sea, in the shadow of the great Kyber Temple, and she would dearly like to rest from it, or find a way out of here.

Cassian stretches out his legs beside her, and there’s a comfort in sensing how his mind is more at ease than hers. Their bond at least remains clear and strong, a solace against fear and uncertainty; the haunted city around them, the dangers ahead and losses behind; concern for Bodhi and the others, the need to get to Ea’dhu undetected…

Though maybe this little ship and her mysterious crew will be the solution to their transport problem. This tidy little cabin feels more comfortable, more homelike, than anything else has done today.

Captain Hera is busying herself making a pot of tea while her hulking mate loiters in the open hatch. A very small man, stumpy-legged and sharp-eyed, appears in the passageway and peers past him, then heads out onto the deck without speaking.

“So,” Cassian says, carefully friendly, “Kanera isn’t your real name, then? We saw the handbills in the city. Theft and treason, is it?”

Zeb chuckles, leaning on the doorframe.

Of course; Captain Hera. That’s where she’s seen the name before. Theft and treason; green arm tattoos and braided hair – hidden no doubt by those long sleeves and the tight head-wrap.

But Cassian is smiling cautiously, and the Captain turns with a fat stoneware teapot in her hands and a broad grin on her face. “That’s right. I’m such a thief, folks all down the coast are grateful to me. Treason against the Empire is hardly a badge of shame here, after all.” She sets the pot down and turns to rummage in a locker, pulling out a green-glazed tin mug and reaching in for another. “The people of Jedha are not yet so crushed as to turn on their friends. A little subterfuge to cover the obvious, and then sail with confidence and act like you belong here, I always say.”

“And you can cross to the Isles safely?”

“Not too often, but yes. Mostly we work the coast ports; a little trade, a little fishing, a little watch-work for my husband.” She deposits a handful of the mugs on the table-top. “Zeb, give Chop a call? It’s red-brew, the spicy kind, he’ll blow a bilge pump if he misses out.”

And this all sounds good, so good that suspicion rears up, ingrained as a habit. “Well, so, did I mention we trust you? You don’t need to make all your crew drink from the same pot in front of us.” Jyn tries to keep her voice from sharpening, but it’s hard. Too many betrayals, too many years of keeping herself guarded even from friends; and she feels so unlike herself, it’s hard to think coolly. Hera and Zeb feel honest to her and yet… 

Accustomed fear and unaccustomed hope twist together inside her. _Have I just blown this? I know what I feel, and yet – and yet –_

“Oi, Chop, cup o’ char for you!” bawls the ship’s mate, jolting her strained thoughts. 

His captain says blithely in the same instant “Oh no, it’s not that. Chopper really would be furious if he didn’t get a cup, it’s his favourite.” Hera pours and hands out the mugs, smiling good-naturedly. “With the amount of kyber you’re carrying,” she goes on “there’s no way you can be an Imperial. So - you trust me and I’ll trust you, and maybe we’ll get somewhere.”

Jyn reaches towards her carefully in the Force, and finds only understanding, and patience. _I’m asking you to trust me, as I am trusting you._ Her own words, spoken to Cassian the night they met, coming back to her in an echo that rings clear against all her doubts; and he stirs in the chair by hers and says “Trust goes both ways,” as if the same moment has come back to him.

“It surely does.” Hera nods, still smiling. “So take my word over this, we will carry the two of you next time we set sail.”

“Ah. Not just us two,” Cassian shakes of his head. “Our friends are still on their way. Five of us altogether. And a horse, if you can manage him.”

Hera chuckles, sipping her tea, but Zeb stiffens and growls “Who are the others?” and there’s a ripple of mistrust in his voice. He feels sharp yet familiar in the Force; a heart threaded with custom of caution and years of betrayal, and thoughts so like her own Jyn feels her eyebrows jump. 

She says “One’s a local man, Bodhi Rook, though it’s critical that no-one sees him while he’s here. Like you, his name’s been stuck on walls.”

“Rook?” Zeb grunts, and Hera says “There used to be a sailmaker, in Lower Fishtown, off the north quay. Yasmaheen Rook. She died last year. Her son was a herald.”

“That could be him,” Jyn acknowledges.

“There are two sisters, if it is. Little firebrands, the pair of them. Fine sailmakers too. If your friend’s coming back, they’ll fight for him.”

 _Oh no, no no_ -“I didn’t say anything about starting a fight! We just want to pass through and be on our way.”

“You may not have a choice,” says Zeb, with a gleeful sourness that has Cassian darting sharp eyes his way. “Fishtown district’s all a-seethe at the best of times, let alone if one of their golden boys comes home and gets hisself arrested.”

Hera shakes her head at him. “Ah, hush. They don’t want a fight, it’s only you that’s looking for things to start. As usual.”

He scowls and hides his aggrieved face behind his mug.

“And your other friends?” Hera’s smiling again. “And the horse?”

“The horse is just a horse, bless him. The others are two of Saw’s old gang. Did you ever meet Maia? Her and her husband Rue.”

“I remember the name,” Hera says, and in the doorway Zeb adds “Dark-haired woman, always in a grump about something.”

“You can talk,” puts in the dwarf, reappearing behind him. “Where’s this tea then? Move over.”

Hera passes him the last mug and he takes a large swallow and immediately holds it out for seconds. “She was another witch, wasn’t she?” he says casually. “Only she’d fucked up and lost it. Just as well, place is bloody crawling with them round here already. Thank you, Cap’n.” and he stumps out, under Zeb’s outstretched arm and back on deck.

“She got it back,” Jyn says quickly. “Her magic, I mean. She’s brave and true, no more grumping from Maia now. I’ll let her know we’ve found transport, next time I see her.”

“I thought you said they weren’t here yet?”

 _Don’t fight, don’t flee, trust her. Starfire child, you are not alone…_ “They aren’t; she and I are – well, in touch, you might say? We can talk in our dreams.”

For the first time, Hera’s smile changes, no longer a conscious putting-them-at-ease expression but caught in a momentary awe. “In dreams? I’ve never heard of that before.”

“Nor had I. But it’s happening.”

“A new magic… But this is wonderful. I hope you can teach my husband about this, Kanan will be interested in anything you can tell him.” The captain blows on her steaming cup thoughtfully. “So, were you the apprentice who deserted Saw? He used to rave about being let-down; by his best and brightest, he said. There were times I pitied him. He’d lost so much. For all his power he was always such an angry man…”

It’s hard to say it, the ruin of Red Crag is sore as a frost-burn in her memory, but she makes herself answer. “It’s true, I left him. But I went back. We made peace before the end.”

“And he gave you all those crystals?”

Jyn nods. “The day he died. I – I keep feeling there’s someone here I should give one to. But you said you don’t want one, so…”

“Ezra and Kanan already have theirs. And I’m no witch, nor is Zeb here.”

“Karabast, not me, thank fuck!”

“Then it must be someone else. Or I’m imagining it.” She can see Cassian looking at her with concern, and feel the warmth in him, reaching out to her. She sets herself steady inside, a conscious act like putting a pot back on a shelf, and takes another mouthful of the sweet tea. “So, when might you next sail to Ea’dhu?”


	9. Chapter 9

The wind has changed by the time they disembark from _Caleb’s Love_ , and the early winter dusk is closing in fast. Jyn’s hand feels cold when he touches her and he pulls her close, wrapping his arm round her shoulders.

There’s good news and bad to be passed on now, next time Maia is in Jyn’s dreams; the relief of passage to Ea’dhu arranged and new allies found, the bafflingly slapdash Imperial presence, Bodhi named as a traitor. But there’s little for them to do now until the others arrive. 

The plan is to sail in two days. Hera can give them a day either way, she says; “if your friends are held up, as they may be. Travelling with a smuggler brings its own bag of hazards.” If the plan has to change for any reason, she’ll send either Zeb or the unnerving Chop to bring word to the inn at the sign of the Crownless Man.

And with that, they’re set.

The city shivers around them, winter cold biting as the night draws in, and the same tension still whispers in the air. The air carries a faint intangible scent, beneath the sea-smell and fish-smell and the spice of woodsmoke; of lives lived in constant uncertainty, and palms that sweat with fear. Cassian smelled that tang on his own fur, for far too long to forget it now. Its familiarity doesn’t reassure him. 

They turn off the quayside at the corner Hera had directed them to, climbing a stepped lane that climbs dark and steep into Fishtown district. 

Up ahead there’s more light, from sconces on the walls of the same street that passes their inn, and figures trudge by as the murmuring, shuffling trail of pilgrims carries on into the evening. Down here in the tangle of lanes it’s dark and close, the winter wind held back by crowded walls. Cats prowl by and lamps are lit in shuttered windows. A dozen children scurry out of the courtyard of a low building, whispering with heads together and carrying battered schoolbooks. It seems much like the rest of the lower city, narrow and ill-lit but alive with the sounds of voices and boots passing, people getting on with life.

Easy to believe this might be a place of secret resistance. But there’s little chance of finding the Rook sisters without hours of work. And Jyn seems unnaturally tired and quiet.

“Food and a night’s sleep first?” he suggests. They had no midday meal and his belly growls at the thought of something to eat.

Jyn nods. Abruptly she says “I need to speak to that Guardian again tomorrow. I can’t explain it, but – I felt it this morning and it’s just got stronger all day. Sometimes I even – I think I hear him. Or I think something’s calling me.” Her eyes meeting his are dull and guarded. “I’m so tired of waiting and being afraid.”

Likely it’s some shadow of this that he can feel; her emotions haunted by the bitter heart of Jedha, the brooding High City, the angry frightened people pretending to live normal lives. The sheer rock wall of the acropolis looms over them all like a fortress, endlessly waiting, a stone mind fixed on some unknowable thought. 

“I’ll come with you,” he says. “We shouldn’t be separated.” They have had good news today, and there may yet be more to come, but he still finds himself constantly on edge, and his jitteriness is all the more uncomfortable for being human, not wolf. Wolf-Cassian was so used to being on the alert, he hardly noticed it; whiskers, nostrils, ears, even the pads of his paws all sensitive to the smallest hint of danger or change. He could have pinpointed the tiniest wrong movement or alien scent, once. Now he’s just jumpy, yet with nothing of which he can say _This, yes, this is the danger, this is the wrong thing, here, right here_ …

He smiles in the face of his doubts, and then remembers Jyn will feel them all anyway, through him, as he feels hers; and has to laugh. No life he’d ever dreamed, not even his worst fears or most precious dreams, could have imagined this. It’s magic, right here inside him, beating alongside his heart; magic, the banned and disapproved-of and disbelieved. Him and the witch, his witch, his Jyn.

“I’d like to visit that market again,” he tells her. “Buy you one of those journals. To write down your work in.” The suggestion earns a look of such gladness from her that for a moment his ill-ease lifts, a cloud broken by the wind. Yes, a new grimoire for Jyn, and then to visit her strange new acquaintances again. After supper and sleep and another day’s dawn. “Market first, tomorrow, or Temple first?”

She’ll surely say “Temple,” if the call from the Guardian is so strong; but she pauses instead, and then with a blink and a sudden certainty replies “Market first. How strange, I knew as soon as you said it…”

And he’d known too, as soon as she did. He wonders if even he could hear this _calling_ she speaks of, if he listened closely enough. He lived for so long with magic bound into his very bones, maybe it’s changed him too; maybe this isn’t just his bond with Jyn, but something new in the world. 

The idea isn’t entirely a comfortable one. 

He says “I hope you’re not to be unnerved too often by this Chirrut. Is it – the calling – is it the same as –“ _how to describe it?_ –“ as what we have?”

“God be thanked, no. There’s no-one else like you. This is – it’s powerful, but – nothing like this. And not like Saw, either. Friendlier, for a start. Almost playful. Yet he’s not playing. I sense he’s been biding his time, for a long time, and now he – it’s as if he needs me to do something.” They’re almost at the top of the stepped street, level with another wall plastered with those wretched handbills naming good people like Hera and Bodhi for criminals. Jyn looks up at them and suddenly draws back, recoiling from the signs and from the light of streetlamps ahead. She pulls on his coat sleeve, holding him back, and leans against his breast hiding her head for a moment. “Oh Cassian, what if he needs us to do things, to stay here, to -? We have enough of a task already before us!” Her voice is shaking, suddenly and wildly. “If the last Guardian seeks helpers for his city he must find them elsewhere, I cannot - I _cannot_ –“

He holds her, making of himself the steadiness she needs as she wills herself back to calm. There are tears, for just a moment. He presses a kiss to the crown of her head.

“Damn it,” she whispers “I’m so tired, Cassian. I just don’t want to betray anyone else’s hopes.”

“You’re not betraying anybody. If we succeed, it’ll bring new hope here and to every occupied land. And if we fail –“ he doesn’t want to think it, much less say the words, but he can’t hide things from her anymore since she’ll just sense it anyway – “if we fail, well. Maybe we’ll have tried and died, but at least we will have tried. And Chirrut and his companion will be no worse off than if we’d never come here.” Another kiss, to her fingertips this time. Her hands are getting really cold; come to think of it, so are his. They should get back to the inn. “I think there’s more spirit of rebellion here than perhaps we’ve given them credit for. Think of some of the things Her - Captain Kanera said, about codes and scouting and watch-work; and her husband and son. What they have; what they must be. The people of Jedha have friends, they aren’t relying on us.”

“But they need _someone_ to rely on. Someone to give them hope again.”

“They do; and someone will.” 

There’s movement up ahead, somebody turning off the lit main street, out of the straggling groups of pilgrims, and he draws Jyn quickly back into the shadows, hard against a wall with an overhang. Better they be thought to be lovers looking for privacy, than anyone suspect they’re standing here talking of rebellion.

A woman in a cloak and loose head-wrap is coming down the alley. A few paces away she stops, staring at the line of wanted posters. For a moment she’s rigid, then in a spurt of furious energy she reaches up and rips down one, a second, half a dozen, tearing them in her hands and crushing the shredded remains. She’s near enough that Cassian can hear her voice, a breathless hiss of pain as she mutters “Bastards, bastards, _bastards_!”

Jyn squirms, trying to peer past him, and he shifts to let her see. His boots scuff faintly on the cobbles. The woman whirls towards the sound. 

In the half-light her face is masked in shadow, all bar the gleam of dark eyes. “Who’s there?”

There’s no scent of fear, coming off her, but a taut anger, barely held in. Her fists clench and slowly open again, releasing the last torn handbill into the dirt, and she tucks her hands away quickly into her sleeves.

“Friends,” Jyn says quickly, all her own fear masked at once.

“Friends?” It’s a young voice, almost girlish, were it not fiercely controlled; held back so tightly as to be bled of emotion. “You’re no friends of mine. Let me pass.”

“We’re here because our friend sent us.” Jyn opens her own hands, showing herself unarmed, and smiles. A hopeful, speaking look he knows is an effort for her. She gestures at the crumpled papers nearest her feet. “Bodhi Rook, maybe you know him?”

“He’s no false herald,” the girl says after a moment. “I just got – carried away.”

She’s standing very still, her hands hidden away now, cloak pulled tight round her form. No knowing what she may carry concealed under those folds, cudgel or knife or clenched fist; and there’s a tension in her shoulders that Cassian has seen many times. He steps in, quickly putting himself into her attention instead of Jyn, keeping his hand on his sword hilt.

“Captain Kanera Dume of the _Caleb’s Love_ sent us this way. We’re looking for Bodhi’s sisters. She said to tell them, your friends can always be seen by light of the moon on the reefs of Lothall.” The cryptic code phrase she had assured them would reassure any Fishtowner. He hopes he’s remembered it right.

The girl is motionless, only a flicker as she blinks slowly. “The Rook sisters, eh? Well, _friends_ , they’ll find you when they want to. Hurry home to your comfy inn now and don’t loiter out here where pilgrims can get in trouble.” And before either of them can answer she pulls on her headscarf to veil her face entirely, and strides away. The sound of her boots echoes and the echoes die away. 

“And if she isn’t one of Bodhi’s own kindred,” Cassian says dryly into the silence “I’ll braise my own boots and eat them.”

He turns back to Jyn with a grin, holds out his hand. But her face is subdued and cold, and next moment she shivers. She says again “I’m so tired, Cassian” as she laces her fingers through his. “I want to go home.”

Home; wherever _home_ can be, now. He longs suddenly, with a heart overwhelmed by the need coming off her, for their cottage in the woods and the peace they knew there; for his place by the fire, for her simple cooking and gruff good-humour, and safety. All far behind them now.

Helplessly he says “We’ll go back to the inn.”

“Yes.” A sigh. “Let’s do that.”


	10. Chapter 10

The bookbinder’s stall is gone, when they reach the market street next morning. Just an empty space in the line of trestle tables. Jyn swallows down her disappointment. No new grimoire to be bought today, then; but it isn’t as if she’s doing much magic at the moment anyway. She’s been feeling out cautiously to sense how the threads of magic lie around people, and reaching for Maia in dreams, and little more. Too risky. For all she knows, that enemy general could be listening to her every time she lets her thoughts so much as graze against the web of the Force.

It had taken three dreams, last night, two of them strange and meaningless, fraught with sadness and images of fruitless searching, and two jolts of waking in the dark and clinging to Cassian, before the third fearful sleep she’d found herself on the deck of a shifting ship, and Maia had come towards her with an awkward rolling gait and a grin of relief.

So now they all knew where they stood. The smuggler’s ship was making good progress down the coast and should reach Jedha by morning. Only one more day of waiting to get through.

And that is good news, news that should have brought happiness into her heart, this icy, frosty morning. The sky is a hard blue and white hoarfrost gleams everywhere. The paving rings under her boots like metal. A bright day, and she’ll see her friends soon, and they’ll be on their way. A bright, glad day.

Yet despite that, she can feel a loss, palpable as cold water. No new grimoire; which in some unaccountable way means, no new beginning. Maybe something more; there’s a sadness too in the thrum of energy that nothing can quite cover, the disquiet and the sense of a voice waiting to speak again. Ever since they got here. 

She looks round the market again, trying to find some thought to set over the haunting that is Jedha; hoping to find the stall has simply moved, and she can settle to choosing a new book as she’d hoped. But there’s no sign of it.

She’s stood blank as a wall in the middle of the market bustle, staring stupidly around, and Cassian nudges her. “We can still buy supplies,” he murmurs. “Come, this way. We don’t want to stick out.” Which they do, standing here while she broods. Ugh, Jedha is wrecking her judgement. She’s no sense at all of how to be still, in all these crowds, this constant hum of tension. Jedha is noise and pressing bodies and anxious faces, is feeling crammed-in and hemmed-about, overheard by unseen spies, overlooked by the great rocky bulk of the High City and its history.

And though she hides her emotions, nods sensibly in agreement and takes his hand, she knows he can feel the stress coming from her. This should be a hopeful day; yet the way through for them seems narrower each hour, the beyond that they reach for, further away. And she’s so, so tired of being afraid.

There’s a queue tailing back from a bakers’ stall, the staff selling each customer one loaf apiece, dark slabs of wholegrain bread. Jyn remembers their landlady at the inn, thin brown hands holding tight, tight to the basket of breakfast bread, lips forcing a good-morning smile while her eyes watch and count, measure and worry. How long before it’s acknowledged that everyone must go short, how long before the Empire brings in a rationing system in this once-rich city? 

They’ll need bread and dried foods, if they can find them. A sea-voyage ahead, short perhaps but it’s alarming how for all that no-one calls it an easy crossing; and there’s no knowing how long they’ll be on Ea’dhu, hiding and seeking, before they even find her mother, much less contrive a way to see her and speak with her. Rescue her. If it’s even possible.

If she’s even still there. What if her captors have already made their move?

Jyn moves into line, her hand clutching Cassian’s, with no idea which of them initiated the decision to join this particular queue. _Buy supplies, don’t stick out._

To the far side of the breadline is a jeweller’s stall. 

Silver chains, and little silver moon discs, silver stars and flowers. A glow like star-shine, drawing her. The only customers, two red-clad pilgrims with shorn hair, are collecting their change, heading away with polite bows. 

It’s an easy matter to change course; she squeezes Cassian’s hand, angles them both towards the gleaming silver. They cross the marketplace to the stall, and “Pilgrim badges!” he says, loud and certain. “Well spotted!” He sounds so happy at the discovery; anyone listening would think they’d come here just to look for this precise thing. 

The moonlit brightness of the trinkets lifts her heart, and the dark hum of the city recedes a little. For a moment she feels wind under her arms, raising her up. As though she could become airborne, and free…

She needs – something. A star?

The stall holder is smiling cautiously. “Good lady, good sir, mementos of your pilgrimage to our holy sites? We have the best selection, every possible symbol. Finest mountain silver from the far south.”

She feels Cassian stiffen, his stance straightening. “Is it Festan silver?” His voice has gone husky. A fragile joy in his eyes; then quickly his habitual closed expression masks it.

“Festan, yes, the best quality. Star-rings for ladies and moon-rings for gentlemen. Or we have snowflowers, we have pierced-hands, or there’s the sign of the Tree for the faithful of Kassikia, the crescent of blades for the followers of the Crownless…” His hands flutter over the display, pointing out different charms and styles. 

There are paired rings, engraved with stars and moon-discs on simple silver bands. Her hand strays to them and the stall holder says eagerly “May I show you some of these fine rings, madam, sir? A good choice, very traditional.”

“If you’d like to?” Cassian sounds bashful, and as she reaches to the threads of the Force around him she feels equally shy. She touches his aura, and in his sweetness is something new, an uncertainty, and an incredulous excitement, folding round joy like a pair of protective wings. The nugget of hope she’s always sensed in him gleams, strong and shining, an echo of the silver in front of them. Cassian is Festan silver, a moonlight glow, and he smiles at her, all dimples and wonder. She loves him so much it fills her like the Force itself. 

Her hand is shaking as she indicates the tray of rings. “I like these…” Her eyes on his, falling into him. So much joy, blindingly bright amid so much fear. _And is this why I had to come to the market? Not to buy a book but so you and I can wear rings together?_

Inside her coat, the kyber stones feel warm.

_We may well die before we even reach Ea’dhu, before we find Mother, before we can do anything good in this world. Yet I am so happy. No matter what happens, I’ve lived and I’ve loved, and been beloved. No matter what, we’ve had this._

“A moon and a star?” Cassian asks. Taking her hands in his. Smiling more, almost to laughter. “Is that the tradition, did you say?”

“That’s right, sir. The most traditional designs. Time was, every soul here on the Gods good earth would have sought to wear such a badge. And an exchange of rings in the Holy City!” The stall holder sounds tearful, yet his face is happy as he looks from Jyn to Cassian, and he guides them quickly and knowledgably to the right sizes. In a matter of minutes Cassian is counting out coins. It’s more than she’d planned to spend on a grimoire. But he places the star-cut ring on her left forefinger, she places the one with the moon-disc on his, their hands linger, touching happiness, touching hope. Just pilgrim badges. But so much more, too.

She pushes onto her tiptoes and kisses him quickly on the lips. “Thank you.” A host of endearments wanting to burst from her; in embarrassment she mutes them. He knows, anyway. She looks into his eyes and knows that he knows.

_Can you be hand-fasted, without an officiant, without having said the proper words? For that is what this feels like; my bond, my hand, and his. This is our blessing, and our pledge._

_He and I, star and moon; is that what the symbols are for?_

_Cassian and I. Together, together, together._

In the back of her mind there’s a new sound. The faint harsh buzz of the Rock resolving abruptly into a catlike purr of happiness, vast and harmonious; a bee swarm, joyful and eager with life, a sea current of warmth, a sunlit day. All around, the world ripples like a pool, like light on water when a stone strikes; and against her breast the crystals flare, bright, hot. One of them, almost burning. 

She glances down at herself, almost expects to see the light come bursting from her coat. There’s nothing. But she knows just the same, in this suddenly transformed world; which stone it is, and what it is calling her to do.


	11. Chapter 11

She’s carrying it in her coat pocket, like the key to a lost home; the chunk of sunshine-gold kyber that Steela Gerrera wore and wielded all her life. Strung anew on a silver chain, bright as a thread plucked from the star-veil. The bee-buzz of anticipation thrums under Jyn’s skin as she and Cassian make their way back up the ruined stairway and across the plateau before the Temple. 

As before, there’s no-one near the blind Guardian’s prison, though the crowd of worshipers is noticeably larger than yesterday, massing around the offering-pits, lined up at the row of stalls. The patient silent monk sits watching as before. But when they join him, and she looks cautiously down into the rock-cut shaft, Chirrut Imwe is sleeping.

“Please don’t wake him,” says his guardian, unprompted. “He sleeps so little.”

He contemplates them for a moment and then pats the bare ground at his side. “Join me. Meditate with the fool Baze Malbus, eh? A fool meditating on his folly. Sit by me, child. And you too, Captain, yes, why not? You have the look of one who never rests.”

“Not so.” Cassian shakes his head with a wry smile. “I rest. When I can. When it’s needful.”

“Ha. We understand one another then.” 

How did he know to call Cassian _Captain_? Did the Guardian tell him? _There’s so much I want to ask, so much I still don’t understand…_

“I wanted to speak to Chirrut?” Jyn says cautiously. 

“And you shall. When he wakes. Come, Kyber-heart, will you sit?”

She settles on the rock beside him. It feels comfortable. Familiar. Not much except Cassian has felt familiar, the last two days.

Cassian is glancing round, without turning his head, just his eyes dancing and seeking. His nostrils flare as something catches his attention. “Jyn – our acquaintance from last night. Over there, where the big group is.” It is a big group too, she can see twenty or more huddled together, in the lee of a ruined arcade beside one of the pits. “I think I might make an offering over there, and just – listen awhile,” Cassian says. “I’ll return shortly.” He brushes her arm with his hand for a second before moving away, back towards the nearest flower stall.

“A wise young man,” says the man who calls himself The Fool Baze Malbus “and a dedicated one. But he drives himself hard. Chirrut sees such things, still, for all his eye-vision is gone. He told me your man was imprisoned for many years.”

“In a way. He was under a curse.”

“You freed him.” It isn’t a question. 

“Did Chirrut tell you that too?”

A snort. “Didn’t need to. The bond between you two is so strong even I can feel it." She looks sidelong at his face; a hard-weathered profile, noble as a statue beneath the wild hair. He says "Bonds between souls are like that, you know. This day, it grows stronger. The same, each day when you choose one another. You freed him, and he has set you free.”

“I don’t feel very free, just lately,” Jyn admits. “Or safe, except when I’m right by his side. I’ve been afraid to do anything –“ she bites her tongue, looking hastily around for anyone too close; but there’s no-one else nearby and _I can trust these two, surely I can trust them with my life, I’ve been hearing Chirrut’s voice humming inside me like the pulse of the sun itself and I have no sense at all of anything save strength and goodness from this man_ – “I - I don’t dare make any kind of magic at the moment. There’s someone out there who can tell when I do. One of the enemy. I could bring him down on us all. It frightens me.”

“Makes sense,” Baze grunts.

It’s a relief like the touch of a warm hand in the icy air, to tell someone, to admit her fear and not have to be strong for a moment. There is someone else besides Cassian who understands. She presses on, wrestling the words down from her confusion. “And - this place – the city is strange. It makes me uncomfortable, I’m not used to crowds and –“ she shrugs, throwing up her hands, unsure how to put words to the nagging undercurrents around her.

“- and Jedha is alive, to those who are sensitive to it,” Baze tells her. “Alive in more than just its people.”

“So it isn’t my imagination.” More relief, so much that she can almost make her words a joke.

He chuckles dryly, an amusement entirely without mockery. “Imagination? I told myself that once. Didn’t make it so. The call is the call. Besides, this one –“ he nods at the sleeping form of Chirrut “- has a habit of getting under your skin.”

The Guardian stirs and sighs, a vast ripple of calm rolling off him. With his wings furled tight and limbs easy in sleep he looks relaxed, even contented. One might almost think him sweet, were it not for the fangs. His muzzle is tipped up to the sky; she can see a place under his chin where the red-and-ebon velvet of his hide is a paler shade, like a spot of soft gold.

“Yesterday,” she admits “I thought I could hear him. In my mind. Like someone was calling me, telling me to come here again.” She smiles, despite the uncanniness of the memory. _The call is the call_ … “Quite peremptory, really. But friendly.”

“Oh yes, Chirrut is very friendly.” An unmistakable smile this time. “At least to those who are friends.”

They sit in silence for a while, in the cold sunlight. With Chirrut sleeping, the voice in her mind is sleeping too.

“And as for those who are not friends,” Baze adds “we will be free of them. Someday. He’s seen that, too.”

Across the Rock, Cassian is kneeling by one of the offering pits now. Head bowed, very still. Just a few yards from the huddled group who talk, and do not weep or pray. She watches him, astonished and moved by how he can immerse himself so completely in the role. He seems just one more humble figure, all individuality masked, a camouflage of the mundane. When she lets herself reach out, even the Force is quietened around him, not so much as a ripple to disturb his blending in. 

The strange girl from Fishtown is near the centre of the group. She wonders what he can hear, what he’s learning as the little gathering talk with heads together. Are they too discussing _those who are not friends_? 

“Tell me about the day they came,” she asks. “Why did they choose Chirrut to keep alive, not one of the others? Cassian told me there were many Guardians here once.”

There’s a pause before Baze replies. “I will tell you what I can." He sighs. Doesn't move for a moment. "They besieged us and the lower city fell, but we held out up here. Every inch of space on the Rock, crammed with people who’d fled their homes. Father Abbot tried to negotiate. But each time, they sent his messengers back without their heads.”

“Heralds?” Jyn gapes at the horror. He nods bitterly.

“Yes, even heralds. Even a brother monk, even a holy Guardian. They hold no life sacrosanct.” For the first time, he shifts in his posture of meditation, his hand drifting towards the knife in his sleeve. Below them, the sleeping Chirrut shifts too, restless. “We feared what they would do, when the High City fell. And I - I wasn’t here. When it happened. To my great shame.” He lowers his voice; the timbre gone harsh, a bite like the wind’s own. “They marked Chirrut out because he was alone. I failed him.”

A yawn rises from the pit suddenly, loud and bright as a gale in a foundry, and the Guardian’s bronze-smelted voice says “If you’d been here they’d only have killed us both. How is that better?”

“We’d have died honourably,” Baze grunts.

“Tell the child the rest, and stop shaming yourself. What happened was the will of the Force, nothing more.”

“You tell her the rest. You were there, I was not.” There’s an aching old history of grief in every word. 

Chirrut raises his head. His blind eyes are wide, light seeking light in the cold sunshine. He sniffs without speaking. 

“By the time I could get back to him it was too late,” Baze says, bowing his head.

“You made a right choice. If it were to choose again, you would do the same and I would bid you to. There is no blame, dear one, no blame in this.”

“If there’s no blame,” Baze says heavily “then why are you still punished?” The great beast snorts, an affectionate gust of dismissal. “You were _singled out_. You say _No blame_ , now, you talk of the will of the Force; but I know your pain. I’ve felt your pain and mine, hand in hand, every hour since they struck you.”

“But what else could you have done?” Chirrut prompts; and he sighs.

“But what else could I have done? Indeed. There was no good choice. But that doesn’t mean I must be happy with the choice I made.”

“We knew the Rock would fall,” Chirrut says. “We had water, supplies, but it was just a matter of time. Don’t listen to this one’s despair, child. This is what happened. A group of the holy Brothers evacuated the Temple orphans at night, by the old secret stair, and hid them in the well-house of the Areata spring, down there in Fishtown. A ship was coming for them at daybreak but someone had to stay with them till then, and the lot fell to Baze. He stayed with a group of frightened children who needed him, instead of coming back to a whimsical old friend so we could die together. That is the sum of his shame.”

There’s a long silence before Baze adds “I saw the smoke rising from the Temple at dawn.”

He looks down at his fists. Breathes, and releases the breath, slowly. Gathers up control again and places himself calmly under its veil; very slowly and deliberately lets go of his grip on the hidden knife. Jyn feels, sees, _knows_. “I felt it,” he says rawly. “The moment they – I felt the light go from you, Chirrut. I will never cease to feel it. You say, what else could I have done? And those poor kids, they were so alone, and so young. And so afraid. But I left you alone, for them.” 

The wind whips his long hair across his face. He doesn’t push it back.

“The Emperor of the Black Isles is alone,” Chirrut goes on after a moment “and all his generals likewise. So those fools think the one who stands alone is the strongest.” A growl of angry amusement. “I could do nothing to dissuade them of their error. Well, so, their certainty is a strong thread, to weave their own downfall. In the end all is as the Force wills. The Force called Baze to this choice, just as it called me to stay, just as it called you and your young man to your bond, and to come here, to our poor city.”

Jyn pulls out Steela’s crystal. Steela, who made all her own choices, who would have had so many questions for the Guardians of Jedha. The bright stone swings for a moment on the end of its chain, a tenuous gleam of light shining within it. She closes her fingers to cover it the instant Baze registers what it is she’s holding. _No need to take unnecessary risks._ “You both keep talking of a call,” she says, low and hopeful with a gathering certainty. “and I’ve had - I’ve been feeling something like - a hunch? A knowledge? – since I came here. It's getting even stronger this morning. Is that what you mean?”

Baze has a crease on his brows for a moment; his eyes flick towards his companion, and the Guardian stretches up with a sudden hum of interest, nostrils flaring to scent the air.

“I think I need to give this to one of you,” Jyn says. She parts her fingers again, just enough to let the peach-sunrise glow of the stone show. “An offering.”

“Golden kyber!” breathes Chirrut. “Light-stone of the far north! Kyber-heart indeed! Star-fire child, and hope-bearer.”

Baze’s lips have parted softly; he looks awed. Then suddenly cautious. “How did you come by this?”

“Honourably, I swear to you. It was left to me. By the man who raised me. It belonged to his sister.”

“And she was?”

“A witch.” She inhales, as the unnatural hum gathers and rises again inside her, storm-like. A sense of balancing, on the verge, but she must – _commit to the truth and speak it_ , she tells herself. _Trust._ “A witch, like me.” It’s like another crystal, light cracking her voice open, speaking the word. “I swear to you,” she repeats. “It wasn’t taken from the Temple.”

“Of course it was not,” Baze says. “Every stone we had, the Enemy took. Not one grain of dust escaped to return here. But _this_ … You give it freely?”

“If I may – if it’s the right thing to do, I mean.”

A quiet smile, a thing distilled from the air itself. “There is no act more right than an offering truly given.”

“As a bond is an offering,” Chirrut adds. His nostrils flare again and he hisses gleefully. “Delicious kyber! Is it for me, Baze?”

“Of course it’s for you,” Baze says. “You know _I_ can’t use it!”

Delicious; it’s the second time she’s heard the Guardian say that. An uncertain laugh, and she asks quickly “I hope you aren’t planning to eat it?”

They both snort in real amusement. Baze says “How many times have I told you that’s a bad choice of word? Now the girl thinks you eat rocks!” He’s almost laughing with her, but there’s a brightness in his eyes.

“Delicious!” Chirrut repeats. Teasing, actually teasing; and Baze grins down at him. “A lump this size would only get stuck going down. I don’t recommend it, no matter how tempting, you old fool.”

He takes the stone from her, very carefully, and glances around quickly, scanning the area for anyone watching. Takes a deep breath, as though preparing himself for something. Then crawls forward on his knees, and holds the crystal up with both hands. 

The Guardian stretches his neck up. With a flick of his wrists, and no other ceremony at all, Baze throws both kyber and chain out towards him. 

The silver loop opens, wide, then wider – wider by far than should be possible, the links multiplying, expanding, she cannot understand it but it has to be a magic of some kind, one of growing and new-making; and the chain settles against Chirrut’s gleaming throat, a fine thread of light across the dark hide. The stone flares brilliantly as it comes to rest and Baze says “Ah, my dear,” in a voice that cracks open like a broken pot, in happiness and shock.

There are tears under his joy, clear in his voice and in the wetness he blinks away, and he sits back down on his heels with a thump, looking suddenly exhausted. Chirrut presses his head against the rock walls, trying to reach higher, purring and growling. The kyber shines like a star.

Pain and joy come rolling and washing off them both in waves; but there’s power inside, soaring and strengthening by the minute, new and strong. She wonders what it is she’s done; and knows it is the right thing, and irrevocable.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the break in my posting schedule; life has been really hectic lately with 14 days work on the trot including a lot of evenings, leaving me pretty knackered. I didn't have a chance to revise this chapter till this past weekend.

The raw bedrock had felt ice-cold when Cassian first knelt down, and by now he’s had plenty of time to regret that decision. But if he’d stayed upright, he would have stuck out far more; and he needs to stay unnoticeable. He’s as close as he can get to the group, hearing mutters and whispers as their voices echo beneath the damaged portico. 

Most of the columns are broken, half the roof down, but there’s still a wall along the back of the old building. It cuts the wind a little, so that he can hear whole snatches of the conversation, between the uneven gusts blowing sound here and there and back again. 

He stiffens his resolve and his spine, and stays put. Ignores the sense of Jyn somehow still present beside him even though she’s two hundred yards off now on the other side of the plateau. More than present; _in_ him, in his heart, in his thought.

That can’t be right, he’s no Force-sensitive, he can’t be feeling her mind like that. It must be his imagination. 

He has a job to do. _Andor, you idiot, focus!_

Some of the speakers have accents so thick it’s a struggle to understand them, but most speak with the same soft vowels, and the same quiet assertiveness, as the young woman from last night. 

The reason they’re huddled up together talking is soon clear, and it’s not much of a surprise; the shortage of food, and the injustice of being rationed for staples like bread and eggs while plentiful supplies arrive weekly under armed escort for the Imperial garrison in the harbour. Angry heated voices muttering and cursing behind him, railing, resentful. The drought, the occupation, the failed harvest, the winter which will only get harder and more hungry.

“And whose fucking fault is it?” someone snaps. Wordless mutters of anger, and another voice growls “the Empire and all their bootlickers have –“ before a hard gust blows and he loses the rest of the exchange. There’s the odd word or phrase, he hears _if we demand_ , hears the words _unfair_ and _block_ and _bastards_ , and what sounds like _we’ll show them_ ; but between the wind and the speakers interrupting and talking over one another, pretty much everything else is inaudible.

The next clear sentence he catches is spoken in a familiarly resolute voice: “We will only target the soldiers and that is **final** , our enemy is not our own people!” A blurred din of protest and agreement rises; someone shouts “Tomorrow!” expectantly and there’s a buzz of approval; the first speaker cuts through it. “No, not tomorrow! We must wait - the full moon –“ and the din strengthens, someone insisting “No, the moon blesses us!” while another voice snaps “We need more time to plan –“ - and he’s heard enough. 

He shuffles back a little on his knees, risking a glance towards Jyn as he scatters his meagre offering-flowers and braces himself to stand up.

Something being planned, soldiers being targeted; dear Gods, the sooner he and Jyn are out of this simmering-cold city, the better.

He risks a glance her way as a wave of emotion hits him. How is it that their bond has grown so much stronger, just this morning? It’s confusing every reaction, every thought. He has to get a grip. Set her out of his mind; but he has no idea how. Awe and astonishment are rolling off her, he wants to run to her, to steady her; _is she alright, what’s happened, what has she seen?_

He can’t tell the answer to any of that; can only see that she’s kneeling beside the big quiet monk, looking down into the prison-pit. Their expressions are focussed, intent. As he watches, Jyn raises a hand blindly to wipe tears from her face, but she’s still smiling and he cannot feel grief, or pain, or fear in her.

He tries to analyse, to describe and explain to himself, but this is all too new and too bizarre, and strengthening by the moment like a rising wind. Jyn is there, crying by the Guardian’s prison, and she’s here in his mind; and careless in his shock he thinks her name, loud as a call, _Jyn, **Jyn!**_ He sees her eyes fly up to meet his, as though she’d heard him; thinks _That should not be possible, even for her it should not be!_ and scrambles to his feet in astonishment, reaching towards her with heart and hands both outstretched. Her lips part, silent across the distance but he thinks it might be his name she’s saying, and she too gets up hastily.

Next moment he’s spun round as a hand grabs him by the shoulder, and a sharp voice says “Hey, you, what are you doing?”

He twists free, shaking the grip off. Letting his face fall into a mask of innocent shock. He’s just one more pilgrim, there’s no reason for anyone to suspect him of anything…

Hostile faces pressing up all around. This isn’t going to be easy. And then the young woman from Fishtown pushes through the little crowd. Ferocious eyes, black and certain beneath the embroidered border of her head-wrap. Voice of confident confrontation. “You were the one spying on me last night!”

 _No, this isn’t going to be easy at all._ There are jolts of panic under his skin and he can barely tell what comes from within and what is washing off Jyn. God Almighty, he has to get a grip!

He blinks and mumbles “no, no…” and tries to project confusion, outrage, anything but the alarmed knowledge that he’s been caught in his eavesdropping. Last night was entirely accidental but this was anything but, and she knows it. Still he has to deny. “No! What do you mean? I’m just praying, like everyone else here –“

Not a flicker of self-doubt in her face. “Last night and today. Snooping around. You and that woman!” She points; but Jyn’s no longer there, only the monk, frowning as he looks their way, and slowly and effortfully getting to his feet. Then the crowd closes in, tighter, and Cassian loses sight of the man. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” he lies. A stab of worry echoing back to him across the ruins, and a sense of scrambling, trying to hurry on rough ground. Jyn, running. _Yes, my love, get out, get away, quickly, before this turns nasty!_

He sets his hand on the pommel of the short sword, as meaningfully as he can, keeping his expression defensive and reactive. The person who’d tried to take hold of him makes another grab at his arm and he slaps their hand away. “Let go of me!”

The people mill around him, not quite a mob but it could go that way, they are disordered and hostile and the young woman seems unwilling to give orders for all she’s clearly something of a leader. On every side, cold angry faces glaring, cold angry voices questioning, bickering, full of confused frustration. “Who are you? – Strangers! – What do you want? – why – who – Imperial bastard!”

“I’m not – I’m not!” He can still feel Jyn’s alarm, it thrums inside him, and in the air around him, so loud it seems wrong that no-one else can sense it. “I’m no Imperial!” He has to say something more; keep them distracted, give Jyn the time to get out of the High City. “I’m here to bring a message. From Bodhi Rook, for his family. For the Rook sisters.”

“Well, you found them,” a younger woman says sarcastically; and gets her ear cuffed by the first speaker. She glares. “What the fuck, Samruta?”

“Shut _up_ , Dhari, you rock-head!”

“You’re Bodhi’s sisters,” Cassian says in realisation. The same eyes, the same features, strong and handsome, the same straight dark brows. He doesn’t need to see the one nod and the other glower again for confirmation. He goes on quickly “Please, trust me. Please. Captain Hera does.”

“Pah. She’s a fool of a reef-woman.”

He ignores the scorn. “I have news of your brother.”

“Liar!”

“No lie, I swear. Bodhi is on his way here. He’ll be in Jedha very soon, he’ll need somewhere safe to hide.”

The younger sister’s eyes widen at the news. “No! He mustn’t! - tell him not to come!”

“His ship is due tomorrow.” If they’re planning some sort of public disturbance then the sisters need to know that. “We managed to get word to him of the danger, but he’s coming nonetheless.”

Everyone around them has fallen silent; they smell restless, angry, baffled, but they hold back and let the sisters talk. Cassian tries to keep himself equally still and calm, to hold a balance against the tide of emotions washing around him, flooding into him and out again, back to Jyn.

“Got word to him? How?” the elder sister demands; and he realises with a jolt that he’s trapped himself. How can he explain, without giving Jyn away? He’s standing staring like a fool in the sea of that shock and Samruta Rook says with a bitter satisfaction “I knew it, he’s lying. He doesn’t know my brother and he’s a bloody spy!” Her voice is thin with anger, but her face is disappointed.

The crowd presses in on Cassian again and he half-draws the sword instinctively. Makes himself sheathe it again. Stumbles back, jerking away from grabbing angry hands, and he repeats desperately “I’m not spying for the Empire, I swear it!”

“Pah. You haven’t even got your story straight. First you say Bodhi’s in a ship coming here, then somehow you’re sending him messages across the open sea? What are you, southerner, some kind of witch? Don’t you know the Empire made the old magic illegal?” She pushes him ill-temperedly, and the others move nearer, finding licence for their anger in hers. 

Panic sets in, and panic mirrors from Jyn. Cassian is panting, surrounded, lost. Someone spits at his feet, and he sees fists upraised against him as the mob closes in. He flinches at the realisation he will have to fight his way out of this.

Suddenly a new voice cuts through the growing clamour. Furiously loud, fierce, the clarity of a struck gong, or something exploding. He can almost imagine the very stone beneath their feet is vibrating with the force of the sound. 

“Hrrrahhh rraahhh hrrhhahh!”

It’s the Guardian Chirrut Imwe. That unmistakable voice, upraised, and roaring.

Everyone stops, with expressions so stunned and moved he wants momentarily to laugh. 

“Let them pass, hrraahhh! Let them pass in peace!”

And it isn’t just in his mind; the Rock is shaking. Vibrating to its core, as though Rock and Guardian are one. The people around him are blanching, gaping; falling back, glancing at one another in disbelief. Suddenly no-one seems to have a word to say. Hands that had been lifted in threat drop down again uncertainly.

Over their heads he can see someone approaching. A tall figure with a staff; dark robes, disorderly hair whipping in the breeze. It’s the Guardian’s guardian, the monk Malbus, he marches up to the crowd, and into them. And ahead of him, Jyn, forging through like the siren on a ship’s prow. A siren with sharp elbows and an anxious angry face. She shoves her way to his side and turns, setting her shoulder to his, glaring up at the faces surrounding them.

It’s hard not to grin at the spirit in her. Clearly she didn’t think much of being told to run.

But no-one is paying much attention except him. Every eye is on Baze. Where Jyn had to push through the crowd, it parts before him in awed silence.

He reaches the centre of the group, and raises one hand raised commandingly. “You heard Chirrut. Let them go in peace.”

Most of the crowd are still gaping in shock, and they acquiesce with no more than a ripple of murmuring. Samruta Rook is staring; she gathers herself visibly, to ask “Holy brother, why? Why does the Honoured One ask this? They were spying on us!”

“No.” Baze shakes his head. He points his staff at Cassian and Jyn. “This woman and this man came to you in peace. They are new-bonded, this very day. They brought a holy offering to the Holy City. Lives will be saved, here in Jedha and beyond, by their choices and their bond. Chirrut has seen this.” He fixes the sisters with a measuring eye. “He sees it, because they restored kyber to him, and opened his Sight again. I ask you to honour his words as you honour his name.”

“Blessed is the name of the Honoured One,” Samruta says, a litany-like whisper; but then “Bonded – you mean? –“

“Not all Holy Ones are Guardians, sister.”

 _Bonded? Is that what we are?_ Cassian looks down at Jyn, pressed close by his side and staring fiercely round the little crowd. She glances up, meeting his eyes instantly, and her lips part, but she doesn’t need to say anything. He feels her thought, palpable as a hands’-touch.

_I don’t think we meant for this to happen._

He smiles at her, since there’s nothing he can do now. For good or ill, it would seem they’ve walked into something larger than themselves, and the link between them has been changed by it. Maybe for good. _And what else is this going to mean?_

“And now,” Baze says “I think you’d best disperse. There are soldiers coming.” 

He nods, and heads turn, following his glance.

There’s a small squad of the white and black Imperial troops at the top of the great entrance stair. Their presence punctures the tension like a needle, or a blade. People shuffle and begin to move away, tucking hands in sleeves or hastily picking up offering cups and discarded flowers.

“Please,” Cassian says hurriedly to the sisters “Remember, Bodhi is coming. He’s risking everything, please don’t put him in danger with –“

“-is this true?” Dhari demands of Baze. “Bodhi’s not dead? He’s really coming home?”

The tall monk nods his head calmly. “It’s true.”

Both young women look down suddenly at the rock. Tears in their eyes, hands seeking one another, emotion visibly overwhelming them. “Forgive us, Holy One,” Samruta murmurs after a moment. “Things have been so bad, for so long – it’s not easy to keep from doubting.”

“Believe me, I know the burden of doubt, sister. But for now, we should hope, and be patient. And find our ways home quietly, before there’s trouble, eh?” He indicates the troopers again.

The men have strung out in a line and are coming across the plateau; stopping worshippers, taking names, moving people on. The first soldier is almost on them. Too late to run. 

Sudden warmth steals against Cassian’s fingers as Jyn reaches out and takes his hand.

_Together. We’re together. Even this, we will learn to come through._

He squeezes her hand back, and prepares to be questioned.


	13. Chapter 13

It’s the first time since Yavine that Cassian has been this close to an Imperial soldier in full armour. He’d thought he would never forget the grim facelessness of their troops, yet already it’s shocking to him, all over again. The masked helmets, the whitened steel surface, the dark eye slit; the ugly muffling of sound when they speak behind that heavy metal barrier. It’s nightmarish to see a man reduced like this, featureless and soulless, all humanity hidden.

The eyes watching him from that narrow slit are bloodshot and aggressive. Wolf-like, he thinks, and has to shut down the sudden compassion and grief for the man inside. _This is not the time, Captain._

“Name?” It’s a harsh voice, pushed too loud to compensate for the mask.

“Joreth – Joreth Sward.” Jyn is silent, hanging onto his sleeve, playing wide eyed in her role as the innocent young bride while a whirl of emotion buffets the air unseen between them. He puts his arm around her, steadying them both. “This is my wife, Tanith.” 

“What’s your business here?”

He rambles about the pilgrimage, the blessing on newly-weds; how they hope for a happy future and a nice home and a family. _Make ordinary, make boring, you’re nobody anyone would pay attention to, nobody at all._

_Nobody; and certainly not a secret witch and her partner. **New-bonded** , whatever that means._

No matter what else, he must protect Jyn from being captured. At all costs.

He can see that most of the soldiers are armed with short swords, much like his own, and hardwood batons the length of a man’s thighbone. No-one has drawn blade yet, their weapons still hanging sheathed; and luckily no-one seems to carry a bow. 

A few yards away, the Rook sisters are feigning dull ignorance to another trooper. He can see both their faces clearly. Their eyes are wary, and angry, they both look ready to snarl. Or to snap.

A third man, an officer with a coloured stripe on his pauldron, stands nearby, glowering at Baze with arms akimbo. The authority of his stance badly undermined by the fact he has to tip his head well back to look the big monk in the eye.

The same questions are being grumpily barked all around them: “Name? - What’s your name? What’s your business?” The sisters give false names, sullenly. They play the part of resentful-but-cowed peasants like it’s a role they’ve known for years. As they very likely have. 

Further off, others being checked are doing the same; the same conversation, the same surly ill-ease all around. Some of the worshippers are hustled off towards the entrance stairway, but everyone who’d been gathered around Cassian is being told to wait. The group bunches up, fidgeting and uncertain.

“Officer…” It’s Baze, leaning on his staff like a man who needs support for his old limbs. He smiles, projecting gruff affability. “Come now, there’s been no trouble here. Officer Jayen, isn’t it? You know me. I give you my word.”

“What I know,” the officer says bitterly “is that you’ve given your word repeatedly, and to what end? You’re pledged to stay in your place and not go preaching or rousing the rabble of the streets. You’re pledged to control that creature of yours. Yet here you are and here’s a rabble, and that – that _thing_ – was heard bellowing fit to shake the earth, not a quarter-hour past.”

As if listening for this cue, Chirrut growls. A low, far-off sound, that reverberates through the rock underfoot.

“Damn it! There it goes again! What are you going to do about it?”

“What can I do?” Baze sounds almost amused. “He’s a whimsical creature.”

_Oh God, must he say such things?_

Cassian braces his feet further apart as another growl shakes the rock around him; feels Jyn’s grip tighten on his and her tension slip nearer to outright alarm. The ground continues to vibrate faintly, tiny aftershocks shuddering under their boot-soles.

Their soldier seems oblivious. He pokes Cassian in the chest. “You! Pay attention when I’m speaking to you. This is an illegal assembly, pilgrims have no business gathering in such numbers.”

“Sorry. Yes, sir,” he murmurs; and Jyn mumbles another apology in echo of his. 

He hopes that will be all; the rest of the troops are busy, asking names, ordering some people off the Rock, rounding up the rest and moving on quickly. Facelessly efficient, showing little real interest in their job. It seems like they just want to get this over with.

But something has caught their soldier’s eye. He points a mail-gloved finger. “What’s this sword for? You’re not supposed to be armed in the High City. All weapons to be left in your inn, pilgrim. That’s the law round here.”

“Sorry, sir,” Cassian repeats. He lets his voice soften and go flat; still nervous enough to be real, but just beginning to lose interest, as if he doesn’t realise how serious this could get. “I didn’t know that was the rule.” _Be nobody, be just like everyone else. Just one more blank amid the blank masses._ “I’ll leave it next time.”

“ _Sorry_ ’s not good enough. Ignorance of the rules doesn’t mean you can just go breaking them.”

The man’s voice is still harsh, but beginning to sound bored, his tone contemptuous but the words more by rote than open threat. 

Maybe they’re going to get away safely after all…

Or maybe not. _Stay alert. Look blank._

He knows that Baze is armed; suspects at least one of the Rook sisters is too; has very little faith in her ability to keep her temper, even less now in the monk managing to keep from cheeking their questioners. At any moment this could all go so, so wrong; and there’s no real safety here, for him and Jyn or for any of them. 

But they’re so close to their goal; he has to hold on to that hope. Bodhi and the others should be here by morning. Tomorrow evening they could be on their way out of Jedha, crossing the sea and leaving this haunted place behind. How can they let themselves be caught like this? _Just play dumb for a few more minutes, hold your nerve, Captain, you can do this._

Another soldier is muttering in the officer’s ear, and at a nod from him, two men march over, to take the Rooks each by an elbow. “Come on, you two,” one orders “move over here with the rest.” 

The group being detained, the ones who were talking earlier. Dhari has gone rigid, eyes flicking up towards her sister; Samruta glares as though her eyes could drill through the men. The soldier holding her arm pulls harder with a curse. Neither of the sisters seems fearful at all; only calculating, waiting, hating. Braced for a fight.

Baze is still smiling. It’s a surprisingly friendly smile. “We don’t want trouble, officer,” he says. “Why don’t you let the women pass?”

Underfoot, the ground continues to vibrate. Faintly, almost imperceptibly; and then, not faintly at all.

At first when it strengthens Cassian thinks it’s a trick of perception; his own fear pounding inside him, or even just the wind again. But the wind is still coming and going in gusts, and the tremor in the ground is growing steadily.

Around him, others are noticing it too now. The soldiers look down, then to their officer and one another. Uncertainty radiating from their stance, their fists tightening on weapons. The locals pull back, huddling together. 

Samruta Rook wrenches free from the man holding her arm and reaches out to her sister.

The officer says sharply to Baze “You’ve caused too much trouble over the years, monk. There’s a limit to the amount of insult the Empire is prepared to bear.” His voice is rising in anger, an edge of hysteria held back but starting to show. “It’s time you people learned your lesson!” 

The first real tremor hits, and with it, the sound of roaring comes again, stronger than ever. Both are coming from the farthest of the pits. Officer Jayen shouts “Silence the beast!” and his voice cracks on the very first word.

“I have no control over him,” Baze says. Still smiling quietly. “I cannot give him orders.”

“Call him off, I say!”

Chirrut’s roaring is deafening. The Rock quakes. There’s a new sound, like stone and iron crashing together, shattering one another.

“Call him off?” says Baze. He shakes his head. Almost kindly. Almost paternal. “I think he’ll call _you_ off.”

It’s getting harder to keep upright, and Cassian grabs hold of Jyn as another earth tremor thunders around them. Bracing herself against him she raises one hand, and he sees the first small flames flickering around her fingertips. Her face is like ice, fear of her own magic and fear of what will happen if she doesn’t act are warring inside her and his knees feel weak with the clash of her misery.

If she’s captured and found to be a witch, found working magic, found to be carrying kyber -

The officer points a shaking finger at Baze; shouts to his men “Take him into custody! Take them all into –“

There’s a vast, violent sound of cracking. The broken arcade beside them shakes and a column topples and shatters. Someone screams.

Further up the slope, where the plateau levels out before the Temple, the Rock has shattered, its ancient eroded surface breaking open. Out of Chirrut’s pit, a black and red limb rises, and a broad paw with flexing claws, that scrabbles at the rim and slips back, tearing off a chunk of rock. Next moment it’s back and with it, a second clawed foot, a fanged and snarling head. A body, and a pair of wings, that hunch like a massive cape and then spread wide as the Guardian hauls himself out of his prison. 

He’s blood-red and iron-black, broken chains dangling from his limbs like barbaric jewellery. Light burns on his breastbone, bright as a white-gold sunrise, where a single kyber stone hangs on a silver thread. He throws back his head, clawing at the ground, roaring like the voice of vengeance.

Jyn gasps, shutting her hand with a snap to snuff out the ball of flame. She’s staring, he’s stunned and awed; or are they his eyes that stare, her awe that overwhelms? Neither of them can move and he can’t tell where the shock ends, the terror starts, the astonishment is drowning him and is it hers or his? - he cannot tell - only that it stabs through him like a knife on every breath he takes.

Chirrut roars again, and his voice is a storm-gust, a gale, a hurricane. The sound soars through the shaking air and pounds through the rock; it hits the line of Imperial troopers and its vibration slaps them to the ground like toys. The officer is screaming orders. “Fall back! Get those civilians out of here!”

The troops stagger to their feet; they swing batons, shout angrily, trying to control the frantic crowd. All around, people are weeping and falling to their knees, or rushing for the entrance way in a stampede to escape. Baze alone runs up the slope, towards his companion, arms outstretched and his staff held high. He’s shouting something, but his words are in the language of Jyn’s spell-chants, familiar but meaningless to Cassian.

The last soldiers shove him and Jyn, hustling them back, as the Guardian launches himself into the air and rises on pulsing wingbeats.

“Get back! Get out of here!” It’s the soldier who was interrogating them a moment ago, clear panic in his voice now. He grabs at Cassian’s arm, Cassian grabs at Jyn, together they are hurried away towards the top of the stairway. Jyn glances back repeatedly; not afraid now, he notices. Not afraid at all. Fascinated. 

Behind her on the rising ground, Baze stands with upraised arms. The vast winged shape hovers above him, dark against the bright cold sky in the oblique late-afternoon light. The Guardian’s body is lean, limbs wiry with muscle despite his years of imprisonment, back sprung-tense like a leaping cat’s. His tail lashes, ridged with gleaming spines down to a crimson tuft at the tip. The spread of his pinions is huge, overshadowing the monk, the ruins, the broken pit as if they are nothing.

Is Baze still speaking? The gale of wingbeats and the cries of frightened and awestruck people drown all other sound. Is he trying to turn Chirrut back? – to control him, as Jayen had demanded? Or urging him on? Pleading with him, communing with him? The strange tableau holds a moment more, the man upright and defiant, the winged creature motionless as a kestrel above him. 

Then Chirrut plunges. He swoops close over the monk’s head and bears down on the last stragglers. People run screaming, headlong down the stairway. Jyn and Cassian’s soldier wavers for a moment before he too breaks and flees, elbowing them aside.

It’s insane not to run too; but the sight is thrilling. Chirrut airborne is mighty, sweeping through his natural element. Jyn gazes up with a fierce little grin on her face, and her delight rushes in Cassian’s blood like strong wine. Each downbeat of the huge wings blasts wintry air around them as they stare, and he’s transfixed, she’s stunned, this is magic unlike anything they’ve seen. They fumble for one another’s hands and stumble back, still looking up as Chirrut stoops like an eagle. One forelimb clawing through the air, reaching out, snatching. Catching.

Jyn is gone, seized round the waist, lifted from the rock. Her hand torn from his. 

A single stab of pure terror hits Cassian’s mind, from her to him, from him to her, _dear God Almighty my love my love no, no **no**_ “No!”

Her white face lifting away, mouth agape in shock, and she screams his name once. She’s out of reach already, Chirrut mounting into the air and banking round to catch the wind on the full spread of his pinions. Jyn struggles; the last he sees of her she’s still struggling, fifty feet up now as the Guardian wheels on the rising air at the edge of the Rock and flies off towards the sea.

Jayen and another soldier drag Cassian down the stairs. He’s still shouting “No!” and fighting to get free as he feels Jyn’s emotions shifting; from naked fear to astonishment and a rush of exhilaration, then shock - and then, nothing. The mad bond, unsought and confusing but so intense, suddenly severed, as though a door has slammed shut on it.

He crumples to the marble steps, shaking, dumbstruck, as the soldiers marshal around him. She’s gone, he lost her, she’s gone. 


	14. Chapter 14

One moment she’s moving back, Cassian’s hand warm in hers and her astonishment bright against his, and the next she’s not. The strength of his hand torn from her. Vulnerability and shock, and the sheer naked horror of being dragged bodily away from him. A captive. Hauled into the air struggling, shouting. “Cassian!” Her voice like a knife’s edge tearing through her throat.

Too late, too late.

She’s caught and trapped inside the rising wind, and her breath struggles to master itself. Cassian vanishing below her, screaming in protest, two of the Imperial troops pushing him back towards the staircase. She must struggle, must fight, feet kicking helplessly in mid-air, _dear God, in the **mid-air**_ ; and the word “No” chokes itself in her gullet as she thrashes her legs and punches convulsively against the muscled arm holding her. Chirrut’s forelimb, locked round her body, fire-hot and strong as an iron chain. The real chains he wears dangling broken, tangling with Jyn’s feet, bruising her.

Her mind registers insanely that his skin isn’t scaled as she’d thought, but hairy. Silken, velvet.

“Let me go!” _I thought we were friends, I thought we were allies, why are you doing this to me?!_ – but the words don’t come, it’s all she can do to take in another breath as the drop below her grows, twenty feet, thirty, then suddenly a hundred or more as they rise and plunge past the crest of the ruined fortification wall, and the sheer cliff-face falls away. Shock like a hand choking her, a grip on her heart; the utter astonishment of being airborne. 

“Let me go!” she gasps, desperate, furious, terrified “Let me **go**!” 

The hot ribcage vibrates, and the sharp edges of Steela’s crystal, _his_ crystal now, press against her spine. She hears him chuckling; he’s actually laughing at her. “Hush, peace, youngling. How can I save you if you want to fall?”

The great wings beat again, as Jyn looks around wildly she can see their leading edge come and go with each powerful stroke. She masters herself enough to look down. No streets or rooftops below them here on the north flank of the High City, just a long plummet to the open sea. Sea foam breaking white on the rocks, far, far below. 

“Take me back to Cassian!”

“Not safe,” Chirrut purrs. “Come, be calm. The Force is strong, and so are we.”

He is strong, she realises. He’s carrying her without the smallest discernible effort. _We’re flying. I’m flying through the air!_

Steela’s crystal is a point of fire, pricking in her back, bright and undaunted. And they’re soaring. 

Amazement wins over her angry fear and she stops fighting. She’s panting for breath, staring, and the air is blue, and clear as sapphire, and the world is gold and red and afire in the westering sun.

_Dear God._

No human being can fly, not even the mightiest witches in the wildest old tales; but _she is._

She squints against the light. So high! And so bright, the rock walls glowing, sea blazing back sunlight. There’s an icy gale wrapped around her but beneath the vast pulse of Chirrut’s wings she can hear nothing but freedom and a wild silence.

No, not quite silence. Waves breaking far below. A gull crying. Beauty and magic and air. So much to fear, and yet, dear God, she’s flying.

But in her memory Cassian is yelling “No!” as the soldiers hustle him and the others away. _Cassian! – **Cassian!**_

Were they taking them under arrest? Or trying to get them away from Chirrut? – away to safety? _Get those civilians out of here,_ the officer had shouted.

It’s a strange thought, one she might never have touched if she hadn’t just been seized and shaken and had the very ground taken from under her feet. Imperial troopers trying not to harm but to save people. But they are human too; and Chirrut – Chirrut rearing into the sky, spreading his vast fire-black pinions, Chirrut had looked unimaginably monstrous.

She tries to reach out to Cassian, thought to thought, heart to heart, as they’ve been locked together this day. Tries and tries, while her breath mounts and chokes. It’s a struggle to control her thoughts, they seem to whip around like the wind, to flail against the walls of her brain, panicked birds beating the bars of a cage. And now Chirrut is turning, wheeling like a hawk on a thermal, so that suddenly they are flying straight at the sheer cliff of the high City, the glowing sunlit rock rushing towards her; she draws breath to shout a warning but he pulls his wings in tight and tips sideways in the air, and suddenly in the lee of an overhang there’s a cave. It opens before them, within moments it’s a wide mouth, about to close, and Jyn glimpses carvings around the opening, and the floor inside smoothed and worn flat. _The beast-holes at Red Crag_ , she thinks. _They really were for great winged creatures. It wasn’t all an old tale, there really were Guardians there once._

A last moment of the terror and exhilaration of flight, wind lashing her hair, feet dangling helpless and hands gripping the claw that holds her. Sunlight and wind, the sea like a burning glass, the rock face looming, huge, rugged, gilded. Chirrut dives into the shadows of the cave, folding his wings to a short wide spread that flattens the air and pulls him up short. Three limbs stretched out to touch the ground while the fourth hitches her higher momentarily, away from the danger of being dragged. And they land. 

He releases her softly as he settles. Her feet drop a bare few inches to the floor.

She staggers, the stone underfoot feeling weirdly unstable in its solidity. Palms still sweating, heart still pounding. _We flew. Cassian, we **flew**_.

Where there should have been a shock like her own, held tender as a loving touch against her every thought, there’s nothing. Somewhere in those wild moments of flight and desperate confusion, her bond with Cassian has fallen away. Or been severed.

She puts her hands to her head; clutching, as though she can drag him back out of her mind’s emptiness. Mouth dry, muscles shaking. How can he be gone, how can he be silent now, be lost, how? There’s only one thing she can imagine. A nightmare beyond belief, so that the very air seems to choke her. She’s lost him.

To think she’d let herself imagine those soldiers might be protecting people. They were Imps, they never do good to anyone and they took Cassian, they took him and –

If they’ve harmed a hair of his head she will tear them apart, she’ll break their smallest bone, set the fire of her magic in their pooled blood -

She rounds on Chirrut, flames already gathering around her upraised hands. “Where’s Cassian? Why can’t I feel him? Where is this place, what the hells are you doing?” Without waiting for him to answer she makes to shove past him and run to the mouth of the cave. _There has to be a way out. I have to get back to Cassian –_

The Guardian opens his wings again and their ember-black breadth fills her path.

“All these questions, and then she just wants to jump.”

“Get out of my way!” How can he even know where she is? Where she’s trying to go? He can’t see her! “Let me pass, damn you!”

“No safe passage behind me,” says Chirrut. “Only before. Unless you really do want to fall. See for yourself.”

He furls his wings again slowly, as if he can tell that she’s checked her headlong run. With a pointless glare at his face Jyn stalks past him to the edge of the cliff.

There’s no path, no stairway. No way down. Just sheer rock, plunging down down down, and more rock below, and the sea breaking upon it with a murmur. The sun setting, the red winter sky of a cold night to come.

“Why have you brought me here?” she asks. Her voice comes as a dry whisper. It’s a long drop before her. “Where’s Cassian? – why can’t I feel him? I have to get back to him!”

“Let the Force guide you,” Chirrut says. “It knows your path. Just, not that way.”

Jyn breathes and releases breath, once, twice; makes herself bid the fire begone from her fingertips. The gap inside her is still screaming where Cassian should be, but she turns with a calm face and tight jaw, and faces him. The Guardian who stands in the shadows. “Why won’t you answer my questions? Where’s Cassian? Where did the soldiers take him?”

“He’s safe, and so are you.” It’s the most direct thing he’s said so far. She supposes she should be grateful for that much. “I could not allow you to be taken by the enemy. Not with the gifts you bear. But they don’t have it in them to sense what he is. They’ve never seen my dearest Baze clear, not in all these years of staring at him. They have no vision to see such things, no understanding of the Force of Others in anyone.” He takes two delicate steps forward, his claws sheathed now, paws soft on the marble of the cave floor; bends his head and sniffs at her face. “Your fear is passing already. You know this is the truth. They’ll release your young man with all the others.”

She’d like to be irritated by his certainty, but it’s too painfully reassuring. “Then why can’t I feel him anymore? – if he’s so safe?”

Chirrut turns away slowly, scenting at the air. He has whiskers, she can see now he’s close to her. They twitch and rise as his nostrils flare. She imagines all his senses stretching out into the space around them. Into the shadows that are falling now as the sun sinks over the sea. He swings his head side to side like someone searching. “Ah, there it is. Come with me, youngling. This is the best place for you.”

“I’ll be the judge of that, thank you. I don’t even know where _this_ is.”

“In the days of the Temple,” Chirrut says, and his words have a strange singsong quality, like an old tale told many times “when all was bright with light and I saw the sun and the moon still, I came here, with my Baze. This is the cave of acceptance, where Guardians always come when they are new-bonded, as you are. This is where we came to train, to explore our bond, to learn one another, in quiet and solitude. Baze will bring your young man to you here.”

**_New-bonded, as you are_ ** _. Is that what this is, the connection between us, ten times stronger today? But we didn’t ask to be trained, or to be bound with anything more than our love._

Chirrut is padding away into the dark recess. “This way,” he calls back. His voice echoes, she can hear the space around him in the way the sound springs back to her. Open, then narrowing, funnelling away. _Very like Red Crag; there were tunnels and passages all through the rock, places to play when we weren’t learning to fight. When Saw was still kindly, still a father to us all._

She looks back longingly at the open cave mouth and the last fading light, the fierce gold and rose of sunset over the sea. But there doesn’t seem to be much choice, unless she just sits here in the open and stares at the sky all night.

She thinks of Cassian’s years as a wolf, how many times he must have huddled shivering, watching for dawn. 

She thinks of Cassian, alone again now as he was then. She wants to cry, but it wouldn’t help.

She follows Chirrut until the tunnel.


	15. Chapter 15

The passageway runs back into the depths of the Rock, leading away from the cave and the last daylight; descending and turning sharply to the left almost immediately. Within a matter of yards they’re in total darkness. 

Steela’s crystal flares for a moment on Chirrut’s breast before it dims back to a soft gold, barely visible, conjuring more shadows than it clears.

“I can’t see a thing,” Jyn points out. She snaps her fingers for a light of her own. 

“How curious; nor can I.”

Chirrut pauses in his walking to stretch. Combs down the length of each limb with claws flexed. The chains break and fall from him, snapping like straw. “That’s better. Come along now,” he says as he sets off again. 

She lifts her pinch of flame high as she follows. Let him snark at her if he wants, strange creature that he is. She doesn’t want to trip and fall, break an ankle, or worse.

She studies the Guardian as they walk. For all he stands ten feet or more at the shoulder, he’s lean and light in build, and his huge wings furl tightly when he closes them. One could almost think him some kind of giant dark cat, rangy and soft-footed as he is, were it not for those folded wings lying sleek along his spine. His hide is covered with a fine pelt, the hair velvet-short and smooth, black flecked with red, the colour of smouldering charcoal. His wings too are velveted, silken membranes of skin stretched over a lace of sinew and slender bone. He has long sharp whiskers, all over his head and right down the ridge of his spine, all the way to the tip of a long, flicking tail. He moves silently. He smells of fire and old metal, and ash, and time. 

As a child, she’d imagined the Beasts whose beast-holes she played in were dragons or griffons. He’s neither; he’s nothing like that. She has no idea what Chirrut is. A desert cat, with the wings of a bat, and the death-dry humour of a very old man who’s seen everything, and heard even more.

“You’re not what I expected,” she tells him, pushing forward to walk at his side the instant the passage widens enough to allow it. No way is she just blindly following into the dark like a fool.

“Nor are you, child. I thought I saw a new Guardian coming, to bring light to the people again. One of my own people, not a human child with the starfire in her blood. But we will make do with what we have; I with you, and you with me, eh?”

Back to being cryptic again already. “Do you mean there’s something you want me to do? I don’t appreciate being pushed into it like this, you know.”

“I mean, Baze and I will do our best to teach you, as we used to teach others new-come into their bond. And you must do your best to learn from us, though we are strangers to you. That’s all.”

“And where are you taking me right now?”

“To find the water.”

“You’re thirsty?”

“Where will I find my dearest Baze, if not in the spring?”

 _Oh for goodness sakes, what?_ “Pretty sure it’s still winter.”

A hissing laugh, brazen and sharp as a clash of cymbals. “Patience, child.”

“Will your Baze show me the way out of here?” It’s all she wants. 

“Patience,” he says again, serenely.

“Hah.”

She boosts the light in her hand to a full-moon’s brightness. Marches on, beside her blind and infuriating guide, towards Force alone knows where.

It’s hard to keep track of time in the tunnel. Their path winds and twists, slowly descending. Shadows leap and scuttle away along the walls as her light approaches and recedes, so that she’s forever suppressing the urge to jump; to arm herself against an attack, or flinch from some new strange creature of the dark, looming up, flying out of a crevice.

The route of the passageway seems to be completely without logic. At one point it spirals, endlessly turning sunwise until she’s sure they’ve circled back on themselves a dozen times. Echoes whisper and chase after her as her boots strike the bare rock, scuffling like distant mice. Chirrut’s progress is silent, his pads soft, the mighty claws sheathed now. 

Here and there the tunnel opens out, into long chambers lined with niches and hollowed-out areas, and the mouths of side passages. Across the ceiling and all down the walls, the neat marks of pickaxes. Sometimes the scars line up, drilled regular as soldiers, in other places they cluster in chaotic spirals or swirl around a gash in the stone, cutting it deeper, savagely gouging without order or pattern. Different veins of colour run through the walls, as if the rock were pleated in upon itself, its fabric stained with unknown ores. The floor has been clear-cut, and smoothed by generations of feet. But the mining-marks in the walls chase off away into darkness, following the folds and changes in the rock, so that the chamber walls appear crumpled and jagged, red and pink, a maze built of roses made rock, of blood and crushed poppy flowers.

The air is less cold than it was in the open, but still fresh, not stale at all; sometimes there’s even a discernible current of air, funnelled from some side passage.

“What were they mining here?” Jyn asks as they pass through another of these open spaces. Baffling though Chirrut is, he’s her only source of answers.

“Your heart, and mine.”

 _Oh **really**?_ “Looks to me more like stone cutting.” _I will not let you irritate me, you – you irritating person._

Another, colder thought strikes her. Is he saying she has a heart of stone?

“Exactly. Kyber. Your heart and mine. The stone of light and magic, which grows in the safe dark, in the heart of mother earth. Not all darkness is evil. It gives us rest and sleep, and births the sunrise of light, as granite births crystal.”

Not hurtful or insulting then; the words are poignantly familiar, so that Jyn’s breath catches in recognition. “My mother used to talk like that. About the good dark, the dark which gives light.”

“Your mother was also a witch?”

“She was –“ no, again this sudden urgent imperative to trust him, for all he’s so maddening, and as good as kidnapped her less than an hour ago. And yes, perhaps here in the very core of his city she should let that trust guide her – “she _is_ , yes.”

_He said he couldn’t allow me to be captured. I have to acknowledge the rightness of that. If Cassian and I had been taken into custody, we could have lost everything. Maybe even our lives._

_And all my crystals; Mama’s crystal. Her message, come into God-alone knows what hands. Nothing good could come of that._

_However infuriating it is to be rescued without being asked if I need help, he was right to do it._

“We’re trying to help her,” she adds. “She’s being held captive by the Empire on Ea’dhu. Cassian and I are going there.”

And that, strangely, stops him dead in his tracks. One foot poised in mid-air, then slowly placed, with almost theatrical care. “You’re not staying here?”

“No plans to. Just waiting for our friends to arrive tomorrow and we’ll be off your back.” She tries to sound breezy, unconcerned, as if she were not in the heart of a mountain, walking in the dark under a thousand tons of blood-red rock.

_And Cassian, where is Cassian, when can I see him again, when will I feel his mind on mine and know he’s well and safe? I want Cassian!_

She’s never known what it is till now, to crave another person this much. Their intense connection has only made the gap he leaves feel still worse now.

Chirrut says slowly “But why did I see you, then? It seemed so clear. You came with your young man, already pledged in heart, you bound yourselves here in the Holy City and offered kyber at the Temple; you are a witch and her guardian, and you stood before me new-bonded. Surely this is the new hope I was promised? The coming of the one who will restore what my people lost?”

“No.” Jyn shakes her head. Tries to find something more to say, to soften that stark word. It’s her worst fear, he really does want something – everything – from her. “I’m sorry, I – I can’t stay. Your prophecy must have meant someone else.”

He sighs. A rough sound, and the strange hot smell of him ripples out on his breath. “I was never gifted at the long-sight, nor at interpreting the visions of others. I’m just an old tired beast, and eaten with grief these many years. I misunderstood the vision granted me. The fault is mine. Forgive me, starfire child.”

His voice has lost all its lightness, all the teasing humour crushed. So many, so very many times she’s heard people speak in that broken way, the flat tone of loss. It’s one more loss in a lifetime of them. Ridiculous how sad it makes her. She barely knows him.

_Damn it, I never asked to cause you grief, Guardian._

“There may be someone else,” she offers. “I don’t know much about prophecies, but – maybe.”

“Maybe, indeed. So it’s to myself I must teach patience, then, patience the brightest star, patience above all.” He turns abruptly away from her as the tunnel widens again and a side passage opens out to the left. “Ah, and here we are, the spring. Listen!”

It isn’t another passage at all, but a round chamber, domed and full of echoes. The sound, not of feet passing, but of water. As Jyn raises her globe of light she sees the walls are split by a series of narrow arches, and from each one flows a channel; she counts four, five, six of them that meet in the centre. Light springs back in ripples, it dances among the fluted stones overhead. Water all around her, pouring into the chamber and running merrily down into a pool bordered with carved marble. 

There’s one more light in the cave besides hers; a regular flame, devoid of magic, glimmering on the water and the wet rock. A lantern, set on the rim of the pool, with a stub of candle inside. And sitting beside it, looking into the ripples below, is Baze.

His clothes are soaking almost to the waist. He must have waded through a deep channel to get here. Moisture trailing back from him leads to one of the tunnels in the wall.

He looks up, and his smile is a small sunrise. 

“You found your way then.” He sounds gruff, but the smile illuminates his voice anyway. “Thought you’d gotten yourself lost, you took so long.”

“Baze.” Chirrut says reprovingly. “You know it was only because of the dark.”

“Don’t you _Baze_ me.” And then he breaks, unable to hold a frown even in pretence; he rises and comes forward to wrap both arms round the Guardian’s neck and bury his face in the velvety, metal-scented shoulder. “Ah, my dear, it’s good to be able to touch you again at last.”

“It is so.” Chirrut is purring, and he nuzzles his companion’s hair and sniffs at him, his blue-white eyes sliding half-closed. 

She hovers beneath the arched doorway. _I want Cassian. I want to get out of here. And I don’t want to intrude on this._

_Perhaps if I shuffle my feet a bit louder?_

“Ah, Baze, my dear, I almost forgot.” She hasn’t made a sound yet. How did he know? Baffling creature. “The witch. She cannot stay, so we have to get her back to her young man.”

Baze raises his head; contemplates her levelly for a long moment.

Sighs.

“Will you stay for an hour?” he asks. “Just so this one can teach you a few things, while you’re here? You need to learn how to control that bond before it drives you screaming insane, little sister.”

One hour; surely she can allow that much. And that sounds as though he has some idea of what this all feels like. “Will you show me the way out, after?”

“Oh yes. We can’t stay here, anyway. The spring rises at dawn. We’ll have to be gone by then.”

“Then I’ll stay. Show me your – whatever it is you teach.” And realising how ungracious that sounds, and awkwardly, she says too the words she seldom speaks to anyone, words Saw thought marked a position of weakness but - _damn it, in their way they are helping me - I think -_ “And – thank you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I realised I've never given a good description of Chirrut's form in this AU; and this is a bit late to be doing that, but I hope, better late than never. As a feeble excuse I'll suggest that this is the first time Jyn has had an opportunity to get a look at him close up.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So; my apologies for how very long it's taken to get this latest chapter to you, and thank you for your patience.   
> I have no special excuse, I don't work in medicine or social care, or another front-line profession. I've just been really struggling in recent weeks.   
> I've read a lot about the effects of prolonged exposure to cortisol due to stress, and that does at least serve to explain why my creativity has been at an all-time low over the last few weeks. My inability even to think coherently has been incredibly difficult to bear. All my life I've known that my mind, my intelligence, and in particular my creativity, were the only things of real value about me as a person. So to find myself losing so much of the use of them, in such traumatic and confusing times as these, has been pretty painful.   
> Getting this chapter to its current state has been a bit like pulling teeth, and I'm not entirely sure it's the best job I could have done. But as things slowly begin to pick up for me, creatively speaking, I am at least content enough with it to say OK, let it go. And, again, thank you for your patience!
> 
> We rejoin the story with Cassian on the stairway of the High City, collapsed in shock, after seeing Jyn snatched away by the resurgent Chirrut...

Someone grasps Cassian’s arm and hauls him to his feet. His hand flies on instinct to the sword that still hangs useless at his waist, but then he looks up. It isn’t one of the soldiers, it’s Dhari Rook, with her sister glaring mutinously behind her. “Come now, brother, let’s get moving,” she says. “We need to let these good gentlemen do their job, eh?”

A gesture encompasses the frightened muddle of people being hustled from the stairway into the plaza below, the Imperial troops already marshalling again, the officer gabbling with haste as he reports to a newcomer. There are already reinforcements marching into the square. 

The new officer wears different colours, and three stripes for the first man’s one. A superior rank, Lieutenant at least, maybe higher. 

Dhari pulls at his arm again. “Come on, brother, we need to move.” There’s a warning in her eyes now and numbly he heeds it, and lets himself be drawn into the nearest lane. Moving quickly before officer Jayen can notice his erstwhile prisoners all slipping away. The sisters hurry, bundling him between them, heading deep into the alleys of Fishtown.

The light is beginning to fade and the smell of the sea makes his heart ache. Only yesterday he and Jyn came through here hand in hand… 

_Jyn, where’s Jyn? I want her. I need her!_

**_I lost her, lost her, oh God…_ **

The streets are a maze of twists and turns, and the sisters keep up a fast pace. He struggles to follow the route, to spot landmarks, to have a hope of navigating out again. Even his mind is out of breath, exhausted as though by its own racing thoughts.

Still no feel of Jyn, anywhere, not the smallest touch of her heart, no sign nor smell of her.

The sun must have almost set now; it’s getting darker in the narrow streets, lamps are being lit in veiled windows, doors shut against the cold. With Dhari in front leading and Samruta behind, chivvying and occasionally pushing, he has no choice but to submit to being hurried through the shadows, down narrow stepped streets and along winding alleys. They’re getting nearer to the waterside, there are gusts of harbour-smell on the air, and he’s shivering with cold, his feet stumbling on the cobbles.

They come to a halt suddenly; a dead-end, a winter-bare tree in a tiny yard, a low dark building tucked behind it. It’s not much more than a lean-to. A roof that sags where timbers have slumped, walls of slats and planks nailed one upon the other like a puzzle. A heavy door sits askew in a frame of peeling wood, he can’t be sure in the fading light but he thinks it’s blue, roughly painted over an older coat of white. Behind the shack, the structure it’s is built up against is as tall and strong as it is lowly; he sees stone walls, good whitewash, a line of clerestory windows at the upper level beneath an overhang of carved beam ends and roof slates.

_Where the hells have they brought me?_

_I don’t have much choice but to trust them. But I’m well and truly in their territory now._

_I want Jyn. God, how I want her with me!_

Dhari pulls a fat iron key from her sleeve and unlocks the door of the shack. With a swift glance around to check no-one is following, they hurry him inside.

It’s pitch-black. The door thumps shut. There are strong unfamiliar smells, of fibre and tar, salt and cold water and a touch of mildewed damp. 

“What is this place?” Cassian says into the darkness.

Rustling; behind him, then on his left. He grabs at his ragged thoughts, hauls back their desperation, stills himself enough to hear the patterns of sound. Both sisters are moving away, into the low-ceilinged space. He reorients himself quickly to face them.

The snap of a firelighter, flint and steel striking, and sparks dance out like midges; there’s a flame, wavering, catching, and suddenly it blooms as a lamp-wick takes light. In the widening pool of light he can see the two of them, staring at him. No windows, no furnishings, just a long shelf and a line of iron hooks in the stone wall before him, and a locked door. The sisters watching him, miniature flames reflected bright in their eyes.

“Where have you brought me?” he asks.

“Home,” Samruta says, sharply. “ _Our_ home. Don’t feel you have to thank us or anything.”

“Thank you?”

“For saving your arse, stranger.” She slides the firelighter set into a pouch at her belt.

“Sammi, hush,” her sister murmurs, hands cradling the dish of the lamp. “Brother, I’m sorry, this must all be very confusing.”

“I’m more angry than confused, to be honest.” His hand has slipped to the sword hilt as he stares back at them. His mind crying inside, _Jyn Jyn **Jyn!**_ while he ignores its wild voice and keeps his back straight, his voice steady, somehow.

“Well you’ve no call to be pulling out that blade, angry man.” Samruta is unfastening the buttons that hold her sleeve at the cuff; as he watches, she folds the fabric back to reveal a slim leather pouch strapped to her forearm. “Those troops wouldn’t have hesitated to slam you in a cell along with anyone else stupid enough to stick around for five minutes.” She snaps open a buckle, pulls out a hidden key. “However pissed-off you are, things could have been a sight worse. How about you think on that and remember some manners.”

Dhari smiles suddenly. “She’s the eldest, don’t let her get to you. Used to being in charge, Sammi is.”

“That explains why I’m having a hard time relating her to your brother.” He makes himself smile back weakly. “He’s such a gentle sort and you two are such –“ what was the word Captain Hera had used? – “firebrands.”

“Pff,” says Samruta, and turns her back to unlock the inner door. “You watch your mouth, mate.”

“Pff yourself,” chides Dhari. “We did just practically kidnap him.”

Cassian lifts his hand consciously and deliberately away from the sword-grip. Makes himself take an open stance, shoulders relaxed, face as calm as he can manage. “I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful. You didn’t let the soldiers arrest me. Thank you for that. But I’m worried about my companion. The one the Guardian took. Where has he taken her? Why would he do that?” For all his best efforts, his voice is tightening as he speaks. He has to fight himself, every breath, has to tell himself _Say calm, stay calm._

_Why, why, **why** was Jyn taken, and where, and **why can’t I feel her anymore?**_

“Hey, hey, have a bit of faith. You’re supposed to be a pilgrim, aren’t you? The Honoured One won’t harm your girl.”

“How can I know that when he just _took her_ and –“ he snaps his jaw shut on the desperation of the words. _He just took her and flew off and I can’t feel her!_

“He’s the Honoured One, what the hells do you think he’s going to do? Eat her?” Samruta slips her key back into its hiding place, turns her cuff down quickly over it. “He’s a Guardian, for the love of mud,” she adds. “They _guard_ us.”

She pushes the door, hard, then harder; then with a grunt of annoyance bangs against it with her whole upper body. It jolts open with a creak. A waft of air blows out to meet them as she hauls it wider and Cassian smells new things, pinewood and hemp, pitch and smoke, and still the undernote of seaweed and salt-water.

“In here, come on. We’re not going to eat you, either. Idiot.”

He can’t see anything for it but to follow where he’s bidden, into the tall stone building. 

There’s still a hint of light through the line of windows in the upper section; blue and shadowed, but enough to show they’re entering a broad, high space. Dark lines, some upright, others angled, rise into the open centre, and the sea-smell grows more powerful. He hears the soft sound of water that is almost still, just barely lapping where it touches something. Dhari moves with her candle to light a brass lamp on the wall, he sees the light bloom and grow, illumining the chamber; high roof, a glint on the glass of those windows, locked doors to seaward standing as tall as the building. Waves slap faintly against the door timbers, and ripples run through, into the wide channel of water that runs the length of the structure, to kiss and sigh back from the silent wooden hull moored there. 

In the glancing lantern-light the shadows slice back and forth across the vessel and her rigging, sketching an ever-changing grid on the walls. It’s hard to tell where the real masts and stays go and what is just intertwined lines of darkness. If there’s a name on the bow, he can’t make it out. But there are two masts, and the pale shape of furled sails, tied-in along their respective spars. A square-rigged schooner, forty-foot long and narrow in the hull for speed, hidden away in this unassuming warehouse.

“We’re sailmakers,” Dhari says, raising an eyebrow as he stares. “Stands to reason to have a ship-shed when you’re in the ship business. This is Bodhi’s boat. Come on, up here.”

She leads the way down the side of the chamber, to where a ladder stands fixed in the wall, running to an open loft above.

Cassian sets cold hands around the rungs and begins to climb after her; Samruta, still grumpy, brings up the rear. One on either side of him, so that if he tries to leap and make a run for it they can close in and stop him. “Why are you helping me?” he asks, ignoring their tactics. It’s their home, they have a right to be cautious.

“The Holy One told us to let you pass in peace,” Dhari says. “He said you and your woman had come to Jedha to bring a blessing and save lives. If we ignored his words we’d be a fine pair.” She swings her leg across empty space and steps off the ladder onto the open platform, thirty feet up.

“The faithful can’t do much these days,” grunts Samruta, behind him, sounding offended “but we can still honour the Guardians when they tell us their will.” She’s right on Cassian’s heels. He hauls himself hastily up the last few rungs.

He’s puffing slightly as he looks around him. 

The sail loft is set up for living quarters, with mattresses and blankets, a shelf of pots and pans, a dresser with closed cupboard doors. A ship’s stove like the one aboard _Caleb’s Love_ set all alone, its iron legs dug into a sand-box. Against the back wall, three upright looms stand tall, with dark weights clustered along their lower beam and half-woven lengths of cream-white cloth still in place.

“The Holy One will come here when he can,” Dhari is already at the oven, kneeling to tuck kindling into its iron belly. “Everyone’s coming here tonight. To plan. He’ll be here, he’ll bring your woman, you’ll see.”

“Meanwhile we’re stuck with deciding what to do with you,” mutters Samruta.

“What to do with him? We’re going to feed him, sister. He _is_ a friend of our brother’s.”

“I meant, what we’ll do with him if the enemy come round searching, you flap-hope.”

“Well then say what you mean, bung-mouth. Call me a flap-hope indeed. You’re turning into a flap- _doom_ , you are.”

They carry on bickering as they fill a pan with water and set it to warm on the stove, and take down bread flour and a jar of some kind of paste from the stores.

Cassian stands looking out into the web of rigging, trying to breathe steady. The whole world turned on its head; just when he’d though he knew his path onward from here, all paths were thrown into shadow.

_Jyn. **Jyn!** _

He wants to cry her name aloud. He wants her so much. It’s like an ache in his muscles, a rasp in his throat, air turned colder, hope less bright, the loss of her a darkness immeasurable.

_Oh, my Jyn, where are you?_

There’s a whisper, like a breeze in the halyards and shrouds of Bodhi’s ship.

_I’m here... I’m here. Cassian, can you hear me?_

His knees give way and his sits down heavily, a few bare feet from the unprotected edge.

**_Jyn?_ **

_You heard me! - He heard me, he heard me! –_

Her voice in his mind is squealing with delight. She’s alive, she’s unharmed, smiling and thrilling at the restoration of their contact, just as he does. And apparently, if he heard that right – apparently telling someone else?

_Jyn! Jyn, Jyn, oh thank the Force, you’re safe!_

He puts his hands to his face and feels the wet there, the tears that have sprung out, the shock of happiness. _Oh, my Jyn. Oh my love. You’re safe._

 _Yes, yes, my dear, yes, I’m safe. I’m –_ there’s an almost audible muffling of her thoughts, as though she’s struggling to know how to put words to something beyond her; and instead she thinks to him -

_It’s complicated._

_But I am safe._

_I’m in the High City. Literally, hidden inside the Rock. I’m with Chirrut, he’s teaching me things. Things I never knew, wonderful things._

_Baze is going to get me out of here at midnight and bring me to you. Where can I find you? – are you at the inn? Oh, Cassian, I have so much to tell you!_

_I’ve been hidden too_ , he thinks, trying not to whisper it aloud. _In a sail-loft in Fishtown. Bodhi’s sisters’ place. I hope Baze knows where that is. Oh Jyn, Jyn, I’m so happy to feel you again!_

Her thought lies against his like a warm hand, a smile from lips that press to his, like a word of hope and the heartbeat of home. _So am I. Oh Cassian, so am I._


	17. Chapter 17

By the time Jyn and Baze arrive, late into the night, there’s quite a gathering in the Rooks’ ship-shed, twenty or more packed into the living space and along the edge of the dock, muttering and grumbling; and Cassian is struggling not to lose his temper. 

He understands all too well how angry these people are, and how much they want to fight back. But not one of them seems to have the smallest grasp of tactics or of the dangers they run.

The High City has been cordoned off, the first arrivals report, sidling in through the same door where the sisters brought him. Samruta hisses in anger; Dhari commiserates and tuts, and brings tea. Within an hour the next comers have brought word that the whole of Jedha is under curfew. No-one is to leave their home until an hour after sunrise. 

A curfew that no-one obeys, it would seem, since certainly it hasn’t stopped these people sneaking out and coming here, to rage and plot and gossip and fret, and eat the Rook sisters’ flatbreads, and drink their tea. All of it equally pointlessly if they don’t get themselves properly organised soon. 

Half of his soul aches for him to stand up and take charge; to shout down the ranters, marshal the sensible, be a captain once more. This isn’t his fight, but dear Gods, they need experienced commanders, and someone to capable of coming up with a strategy. Jedha has heart, and fire, and weapons, it seems as though everyone who creeps into the ship-shed that night is talking about the knives and bows they have hidden away, the whaling harpoons, the boathooks and crowbars. The Empire apparently has little grasp of how intense the opposition to their rule has become over the past few years. 

There’s a man who keeps shouting “Let’s go! Now, let’s do it now!” until Cassian begins to suspect him of being a spy planted to disrupt the gathering. There are others who are quick to complain, but who hang back and put forward new targets, or find problems with the agreed ones, if anything gets too focussed on the possibility of action.

It hurts to think they could waste the element of surprise, and the opportunity that would have given them, to strike a clear blow against the Empire. The planning needed, and the charismatic leadership, and the communication and steadiness of purpose, all are equally absent. They should be capturing the land gate, taking the harbour and the city walls, and blockading the barracks; then take the storehouses and lay siege to the Governor in his residence, once they have control of entry and exit from the city to prevent him from sending word of the rising. Get control of the key Imperial bases, consolidate as fast as possible; strengthen their hand and win over the doubting and the fearful by distributing supplies to the city. Urge steadiness of heart, ask those who cannot fight to keep to their homes, do all they can to restore faith in Jedha’s ability to stand alone. Gather and coordinate a work force to mend the damaged walls. Refuse entry to the harbour to all but friendly ships, and turn the Empire’s catapults seawards to fight off any counter-attack. 

But they risk dissipating every advantage they have, in an uncoordinated rash of fights with street patrols and mass prayer meetings at the entrance to the High City. They want to sing and throw stones, at an enemy who will not hesitate to fire crossbows in return. This isn’t a successful revolt in the making, but a massacre.

He sees in his mind a black-robed figure with a blade that scatters fire, striding forward, slashing into a disorderly crowd of Jedhans shouting their chant of protest; breathes hard, forcing the picture from his mind. 

“We should start now!” The ranting man again. “Start fighting now! Make them pay! Burn their sorry hides in the street!”

“Not till the moon is full! – Not till we’re under Her eye!” One of the same voices that urged this earlier, up on the Rock. It’s more important to some of them to have the blessing of the Gods on their enterprise than to succeed in it. 

He’s been grinding his jaw shut so often his face is starting to ache. This isn’t his fight and it’s not for him to act like their commander. No reason at all to suppose anyone here would accept him if he did. But agony to listen to the chaos that passes for planning, here among desperate people who have no leader.

He hopes the brother monk, and the Guardian, can command enough respect to take charge.

And all the time now, soft in his mind, coming and going like a voice from another room, he can feel Jyn’s presence. She’s coming to him. It holds him to his purpose; the purpose he’s always known was his. Captain, soldier, servant of the greater good. _Stand steady, don’t muddy this mess still further by pretending to an authority that isn’t yours. Stand firm, let be, wait; for the right moment, for the task only you can do. And for Jyn._

The touch of her mind is different now, more controlled, no longer a surge of emotion that threatens constantly to overwhelm. There’s a sense of growing calm in her, and a touch that is almost delicate as she learns to move and live within it, subtly, carefully, shifting from the expression of one thought to another. She reaches for him, and lets go again; and he reaches for her, daring, hoping, and feels her mind’s touch, hears her as though she spoke beside him, or just inside his hearing.

And so each time he starts to formulate something to say as the disorganised debate judders down into argument once again, he reminds himself; Jyn is coming, Baze Malbus is coming, and when the monk arrives he will be the best hope this uprising has of a general. Then he and Jyn can wait out the rest of the night, and leave come daybreak with their consciences clear. Tomorrow they are to leave Jedha. Hopefully with Maia and Rue; maybe with Bodhi too, though he wonders if the herald will be able to bear leaving his sisters once more so soon. Leaving them to foment and fight a rebellion that may be doomed from the start.

Perhaps him being a Herald will help. Perhaps he’ll be able to tell these people the things they don’t want to hear, or seem incapable of thinking through; you must organise, you must plan coherently, you must prepare for casualties and be ready to dig in for your objectives.

But whatever happens, Cassian and Jyn must not get involved, though the idea burns and scratches at him, the claws of self-disgust sharp as venom at the thought of leaving another field of battle unwon. They have a mission of their own, one that could shape a far larger part of this war than the fate of one city. They have to carry on, or the enemy will win greater and greater power and crush far more than just Jedha, and that figure in black won’t even need to draw his sword to kill innocents by the hundred.

He, and Jyn, are leaving. His soldier’s heart wants to fight. But now, and here, are not the time or the place, and his fight is elsewhere.

She whispers in his mind, reassuring, describing; how there was a stairway in the shadows, a channel of water running by her feet, a fountain house with arcades opening onto the deserted midnight street. There was a long pause, hanging back in the shadows, waiting till a patrol passed by. There was a path threaded through narrow lanes, under stone arches, in the lee of high walls. The burly monk with her, walking ahead, guiding her without words, his booted feet silent as the footfalls of a desert cat; and for some reason that image amuses her mightily, he can hear the smile in her thoughts as she verbalises it to him. 

Brother Baze knows his way through every winding alley of Fishtown, she tells him. They are coming, they are coming to join him, coming to this secret meeting that even the monk who lived on the bare Rock nonetheless knows all about.

He can hear the mixture of amusement and respect in her mind. It warms his own mind, to feel it.

Not long now, that he must go on holding back. The urge to offer advice, the urge to demand compliance, the urge to yell his objections and his despair at the folly being mooted. He’s sitting on his hands to remind himself to say nothing. Nothing. 

May the Gods have mercy on these people, and bring them the leader they need.

Jyn is coming, she’s coming; she remarks inside his head that the harbour smell is getting stronger and there’s a tree and –

Someone knocks on the outer door, not loud but clearly just the same, a single crisp _thump_ that cuts through the tangle of murmuring and gossiping from the crowd.

Cassian scrambles to his feet, feeling her so near now, impatient and hopeful at the same time. Pushes past a group of the grumblers, to the top of the ladder. _Jyn, Jyn, it’s you? - it’s you!_ And when he reaches the foot of the ladder she’s there. The monk looms behind her, grinning. 

Her thoughts rush into his like birds to a longed-for roost. Relief, rest; rest and peace at last.

Someone says behind him “Holy One, thank the Gods you’ve come” and Baze moves into the room, standing tall, commanding attention. But Cassian doesn’t listen to his words, barely registers as the others crowd round eagerly. He holds Jyn, they hold one another, and everything falls away.

_Now we can rest; and now we can go our way again, and leave this place honourably._


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the long delay between chapters!   
> I'm slowly emerging from a ghastly pandemic-induced mental state in which maintaining any kind of concerted focus was well-nigh impossible for weeks on end. Getting my brain back in gear gradually. I hope to write and post a little more frequently again soon; but I have a Big Bang fic to work on as well now, so there's that.   
> Anyway, thank you to everyone reading this for your patience; and thank you to everyone who's commented on this and my other stories in the last couple of months. Your feedback has meant the world to me as I wrestled with depression and dread and severe writers' block. Hugs and new hope to you all!

She has so much to tell Cassian, and no idea even how to begin to explain some of it. After her struggles against Saw’s narrow vision, and all the years of trying to study alone, suddenly, she has teachers who know about her powers, who know what she is. Who understand and support and advise her, and tease her; who smile and commend her. And never try to force her into being something she is not.

She sits against his side, the two of them pressed against the back wall, trying to keep out of everyone’s way, and she pours it all out, the excitement, the lessons, the joy. 

His own joy at hers is bright as a mirror. He tells her his relief at her return; and his frustration, wanting to stay and help, his grief and fears for Jedha. They hold one another close.

Around them, somehow, miraculously and with a weary determination that is heartrending, Baze Malbus takes control of the little meeting of rebels.

At some point, Dhari brings them soup. It’s good; but Jyn suspects she would eat it if it were just boiled weeds, after the day she’s had. Fish broth and some kind of small beans, a good-sized bowlful with two spoons for the pair of them. Hunger, hunger, dear Gods, but she was so hungry!

Dhari Rook, Bodhi’s sister. Younger sister. A kind face, brown eyes like her brother’s, but sharper, more certain. The elder sister is deeply embroiled in a kind of verbal fist fight with another of the group now, Baze intervening repeatedly to bring them back to the main debate. The monk’s voice is old and he sounds steadily more tired but he doesn’t waver.

Jyn huddles in close to Cassian, letting his warmth envelop her.

She has no idea what the hour is, her thoughts are spinning with tiredness and her eyes feel dry as the dead. The assembly are still debating and arguing, spreading out into smaller groups, a grumble of voices muttering by lamplight that grows more flickery and yellow with the passing hours. 

The masts and cables of the moored ship sway, high above the dark crowded heads that also sway and nod, and the sound of small waves against the dock is swaying too, muffled and contained by the timbers below them, it comes and goes, creaking in, sighing out, in the dark, beneath the see-sawing voices of argument and complaint. 

She wakes, and only then realises she’s slept. Head on Cassian’s shoulder. Arm across his waist. Curled into one another. She shifts her feet and knocks against the pottery bowl sitting on the decking by her feet; sits up hastily, fumbling for it, but it’s empty, and the two beakers beside it are as well. Tea, Dhari gave them tea as well, weak, hot, sweet. It feels like five minutes ago but it was last night, and this is morning.

Cassian is warm and relaxed beside her, folded up and crumpled in the confined space so that she thinks _He’ll be so stiff when he wakes up, oh my love_ , and wonders if it would be right to pre-empt that with a touch of healing magic. Ease the discomfort before he has to notice, before he rises or tries to stretch and has to groan and flinch. She would spare him from any pain if she could; and it would be such a small thing, just a few words and a little spun thread of power. But an intrusion, just the same. Better to offer, than to impose it on him.

But let him sleep, for now.

His sleeping mind is cool against hers, a silvery presence, like a pearl of moonlight in the shadows.

It’s very still, almost past the boundary of night and morning but with a deep hush everywhere. The interior of the ship-shed is dim and full of shadows just a bare shade lighter than black. The place is quiet, at last, after the endless noise of the gathering. Either the whole Force-damned mob of them went off home, or everyone else is sleeping on the floor too.

Yes, there are several more people here. Dark bulking shadows rest on the deck, their body heat and faint breathing warming the chill air; all motionless, deep in sleep. 

Jyn reaches out a tentative thread of awareness; feels souls that have slipped under the weight of their tiredness, but are ready nonetheless, waiting to wake and fight.

 _There’s trouble coming_ , Chirrut had warned her before she left the cave. _Trouble beyond what I can see. And we must let it come, though we cannot control its form._

She could tell by then how much he regretted that, but he accepted it just the same. Trouble beyond the measure of his renewed Sight.

A Sight, he’d told her, she too might develop in time. One of the Great Powers the Guardians of old had borne; the powers of the starfire. Far-Seeing and Foreseeing, Minds’-touch and Light’s-touch, Healing and Mending and the Making of the New; the bringing of Fire and Water, Wind Calling and Spirit Calling, the power to move the Earth herself.

So many powers, undreamed-of, lying before her now. She’s known and used simple spells for years, used chants and herbs to do healing and mend broken things, but none of it was any great stretch of her magic, any more than binding together a dried-flower bunch for a charm had been. She’d been a hedge-witch when all’s said, and nothing more. Now here are these futures and hopes, things she’d never imagined, spread out like open country below a mountain pass. Her world become wide and misty in morning light, and full of new chances.

And Saw – Force rest his soul – was wrong. So wrong. She is not a weapon at all. Something far greater and far stranger.

Everything she is and everything she can do has been barred and banned by Imperial order, in every land they rule, since she was a child. None of it permitted, except to the Emperor and his chosen few. Witchcraft, magic, the mysteries of the Guardians, all alike are forbidden her. 

She’s going to do them all anyway.

She and Cassian are already doing one of the strangest of all. The Guardians’ Bond; they’ve walked into it in ignorance and innocence but it has been forged, it will stand unbreakable for all that they didn’t intend it. At least now, with Chirrut and Baze teaching her, she can learn how to control it. How not to be overwhelmed by it. And they, and she, will teach the same skills to Cassian, and the other things he will need to learn, now.

They’d listened fascinated to her brief outline of how she and Cassian met; the curse and the breaking of it, their friendship and their love. 

_That explains it, for there is a trace of magic in him, your young man,_ Chirrut had told her. _I do not know if it was always there, or if the curse woke it as it fixed itself in him, but there’s a thread of the living Force in his heart, that has twined around yours. Just such a trace, just such a thread, as Baze has running in him, that brought us together. A bond dearer than brotherhood, closer even than marriage. The Force in you calls, and the Force in him answers, and so the Bond of Guardians is made._

 _Closer than marriage - does that mean we can’t marry?_ she’d asked, stunned into it. Saying aloud what she’d only just allowed herself to think in private. Chirrut whistled, his gleaming voice sweet in amusement, and the Guardian’s guardian had laughed aloud.

_No reason at all you can’t. Chirrut and I did, and we aren’t even the same manner of creature! Love is love. The Bond only makes it stronger._

The Bond makes it stronger. 

There’s a sound from above, wooden hinges creaking, and grey early light filters down as somewhere a window is uncovered. Nobody stirs. Jyn lies back again, looking at Cassian beside her, sleeping, vulnerable. Restored to her, still with her through everything. His sword-hand lying relaxed and open, fingers brushing against hers. 

He’s so dear to her, here in the weak, wintry dawn, fast asleep and trusting, so precious, she would stand by him through fire and thunder, would keep to his side though all the towers of the earth should fall. Her Cassian, her love, the rock of her life now.

She lies motionless and watches him, taking in every detail. The weary shadows round his eyes, the chapped place on his lower lip; the silken hair, getting far too long now, going inside his collar. 

There’s a growing smell of food coming to her, something fishy, something herby and oily, grilling, the perfume of cooking. A sudden delightful memory of their time up in the mountains brings a grin to her face; of waking with wolf-Cassian snuggled against her side, and a slab of cooked salmon wedged under the blankets with them, and a day’s travel ahead that was like the first adventure of friendship.

She’s hungry again, damn it. Her belly is grumbling and gurgling at the sweet smell. She sits up again, careful not to wake Cassian, and looks around.

It’s a strange space, all timber above the low stone footings; the roof soars into the shadows, an arched span higher than it’s wide, remnants of last year’s sea-martins’ nests clinging to the beams. The hull and masts of a small slim ship rise incongruous into the middle, bowsprit looming across the wooden pontoon where she and Cassian and the other sleepers lie. To one side, vast timber doors, high enough for the ship to come in with her masts and rigging up. The doors are closed now, outlined in clear twilight. Dawn is coming fast. 

There’s a faint murmur somewhere, high up, and then footsteps; not walking but scuffling, regular and oddly slow. She makes out a human shape descending like a spirit and stiffens before she realises there’s a ladder. Someone is climbing down to them here at ground level. Or dockside level, sea level, whatever she’s to call it, here in this crazy barn, ship-house, whatever it’s called. Ship-shed. There’s an upper level of some kind, where Cassian came down from when she arrived. 

Where the whispering has begun again, and the smell of food comes wafting down.

The figure reaches the bottom of the ascent and comes over, threading their way between the other sleepers, carrying something carefully. Whispers “You’re awake,” crouching down to join her.

“Yeah.”

Dhari Rook takes the empty bowl and sets down a new one, transferring their two spoons casually across. “Fish-trap’s come up good this morning. Bit of grilled blue-gill for you, set you up for the day.”

“Thanks.” The fresh-cooked smell is intensely good, savoury and salty. She starts to ask “Is there any –“ and hears her own words in time to change it quickly to “anything we can do for you?” - _anything we can do - not **Is there any bread**? Dear heaven, for shame! - when they’ve given us so much already, food for our bellies and a refuge in the curfew, a quiet place to rest, and no questions asked._

“Do for us?” Dhari blinks. “Just – bring my brother here safe? Don’t - don’t let him come running home shouting. He mustn’t draw attention. Not to himself or us, or to _True-heart_ here.” A nod towards the grey hull behind her. “We aren’t exactly meant to have her with us, you know?”

Jyn doesn’t know, but it’s not hard to imagine there’s some kind of rule against this; the Empire’s Occupation clearly has petty rules for anything that can help keep the population sad and crushed in spirit. 

It’s hard to imagine the modest Bodhi drawing anyone’s eye, much less running shouting through the docks. She bites her lip. “We’ll bring him to you,” she promises. “He should arrive today. Or - could you find some excuse to come down to the harbour with us?”

“We could, aye, that might work. Here, eat your blue-gill before it chills off. And don’t tell Sammi I gave you some before the Holy One.”

“Is he still here? – Brother Baze?”

“He’s up a-top –“ she gestured back towards the ladder – “with Sammi and Larn Sillu and that old grouch Meggone. They talked till it was almost first-light, they’re talking again now, hark at them. I snuck down to check the fish-trap and snuck up again to cook some food and I swear they barely saw me, they were so deep in plotting and planning. Left them to it. I wanted to check you had a bite too, after all you’re guests in our house and our city and there are customs, hospitality, you know?”

“Thank you.” Jyn takes a bite quickly, remembering again with shame how near she came to asking for bread instead. The food is fresh-cooked and tasty, still hot from the griddle and tangy with some sweet-sour spice. She nudges Cassian. “Wake up, love. Breakfast.”

His dear eyes, blinking, soft for a moment and then brightly awake. “Good morning,” he murmurs, and unfolds himself carefully from the floor. If he is stiff, he doesn’t show it. He grins. “I see it’s almost daylight.”

“Here,” Jyn thrusts the second spoon at him. “Eat. It’s good.”

“How long till the curfew’s lifted?” Cassian asks round his first mouthful. Dhari shrugs, settled in a crouch beside them on the floor.

“Not long, I would guess, the sun is up now, so… There’s time enough to feed everyone and sort out who leaves when. Wouldn’t do to have everybody march out all at once, way too obvious. But now there’s light, folks can’t sneak away the way they’ve been doing all night.”

“Do you know what the tides are like today?” He scoops up another spoonful. “Our friends should be arriving soon – do you know what the sea will be like this morning?”

She nods. “Seas are fair. Tide’s coming in at the moment. A lot of the bigger ships try to come in on a rising tide. Less risk of hitting the chains.”

“Chains?” Jyn frowns. It’s not a cheerful word at the best of times. “What’s in chains?”

“The harbour. Well, the whole city, really, but you’ll see what I mean. There’s a big chain across the harbour mouth, another between the Fishtown wharves and the main basin. They pull them up every evening for a blockade and let them down slack at dawn, but sometimes they’re sloppy about it and the bigger vessels can get keel damage. No purpose to it, really, just to keep us in our place. Remind us we can’t come and go freely in our own home. Bastard Imps, they just like to control everything.”

Some of the other sleepers are stirring. Dhari gets up again, still carrying the empty soup bowl. “I need to get the rest of the blue-gill. Got to do what I can for these good folk, eh?”

“I wonder what Baze is talking about with the others.” Cassian tilts his head, a quick nod up at the sail-loft. “I’d hoped he might be the one to lead these people, they need a leader, that’s for sure. But all he seemed to be doing last night was trying to calm things down.”

“Maybe he feels this isn’t the time to start a fight. Not while the Imps are braced for it.”

“Yes. I hope so.” He sighs. “I want so much to do something to help them but I don’t know what I can. There’s so much passion here but no-one seems to have the smallest notion of strategy. How to keep things in the backstreets, bring the fight into your own territory. How to prepare for casualties, keep lines of communication open, attack where it’s most effective, that kind of thing. They want to be free but they could dissipate their energies in stupid affrays like yesterday.”

“And meanwhile the Imps will be trying to hunt Chirrut down.” Jyn scrapes up the last of the grilled fish. There hadn’t been very much of it but it’s a welcome warmth in her belly. “We can’t let them capture him again, Cassian. He’s too important.”

“And not just to you.”

“And not just to me.” She looks around, at the handful of others who also stayed the night, stretching and waking now, talking in low voices, greeting one another. “He’s the Last Guardian. Him being free again is a symbol for every soul here.”

They finish their food, and watch as gradually around them people start to leave; pulling hoods down and head-wraps over their faces, slipping out in ones and twos through the side door. Baze comes down from the upper loft, moving carefully on the long ladder like a man bone-weary. He glances around and that unpractised smile of his gleams for a moment as he sees her still there. 

“Hey-ha, little sister.” His voice is hoarse from use. He makes his way over to them. “Still here with us, then?”

“Still here for now, and grateful for the shelter.” Jyn scrambles to her feet.

“How did things go, up there?” Cassian nods upwards again. “Dhari told us you were talking to the others all night, I hope you were able to make solid plans…”

The big man stretches, saying only “Plans to stop worse plans, maybe.” He yawns, rolls his shoulders, muttering a grumble of complaint at the aches and pains of age. “I think I managed it. No fighting for today, at least.”

Relief in Cassian’s face. “I know it’s not my place, sir, but – I think that’s wise. Right now the enemy will be braced for more trouble. Until the people are properly armed and ready for a long fight, it’s risky to keep letting little riots like yesterday break out.”

Baze raises an eyebrow, his expression briefly cynical. “We’ll gather our forces, young man, don’t you worry. I know you and Jyn have to be off soon and cannot stay to join us. Allow that we can fight our own fight well enough, eh?”

“Of course. I’m sorry.” Cassian sounds so guarded she reaches for him mentally in concern; but the moment she touches their bond she feels it; not hostility at the mild reprimand, but respect, and an embarrassed awareness that he was indeed assuming the people of Jedha couldn’t manage their own uprising. She squeezes his hand quickly, smiles up at him as he looks down. 

The last of the other people who stayed the night is just leaving; an ancient woman, with skin so lined her face looks like a map of the desert. She catches at Baze’s sleeve with a thin hand as she passes, and bows her head, presses her brow to his hand. “Holy One, we’ll wait for your word. My duty to you and the Honoured One Chirrut, this day and all our days.”

“And my blessing to you, Meggone.” Baze fails to stifle another yawn; speaks round it muffledly, reverence and tiredness blurred together. “Be one with the Force, and the Force be with you, child.”

“And also with you, Holy One.” The old woman yawns too, and grins up at him suddenly. “Off to see if I can get back to my shrine yet, eh? Smoke ceremony’s going to be late this morning.”

The side door is opened and shut behind her, and Samruta comes quickly over. “Will you break your fast with us, Holy One? We haven’t much but what we have is yours.”

Dhari appears beside her, smiling shyly. “There’s still some blue-gill, Holy One, grilled and seasoned, and sumac tea if you like?”

“I should get back to Chirrut,” but he stops, looking down at them as they hover watching him and adds “but I’d be very glad of something to eat first. And my thanks.”

Dhari beams and he allows her to bustle him away while her sister edges Jyn and Cassian the other direction, towards the high main doors, where the outline of the morning sun is strong now. The timbers stop well above the water, bright daylight coming in below, glinting on the tiny rippling waves. For a moment Jyn can picture the great doors swinging open, the ship sliding out into the sunshine and her freedom. But Samruta leaves the sea-doors closed. Here at the side, there’s a second outline, inset within the tall one; thin lines of light delineating a regular-sized doorway which Samruta unlocks and glances out of before opening it wide.

Sunlight blasts in, and ice-cold windy air. “Here, quick –“ she ushers them hurriedly towards the rectangle of brilliance - “go now while the way’s clear. Don’t bring us any trouble – we’re trusting you with that, pilgrims. Bring my brother home safe, don’t let him cause any hoo-hah, eh? And, well - Force with you.”

And with that, she practically shoves them both out, and shuts the small door at their backs.

“Force with you too,” Jyn murmurs. She blinks at the closed door, and up. They’re standing at the foot of a whole line of identical buildings, each one high as a ship’s mast, each with an identical dock inlet and a set of huge timber sea-doors, bolted and locked. Narrow wooden crossways hang, strung on gantries across the mouth of each ship-shed, forming a walkway all along the waterfront. But every one of these buildings could hold a sea-going craft, stowed away unused, just like Bodhi’s ship.

Bodhi’s ship. _True-heart._ It’s a good name; and perhaps it’s not the only vessel hidden in plain sight from the Empire.

The winter morning is bright and bitter cold, and across the calm open water of the harbour she can see the masts of several ships moored offshore, waiting. At the foot of the long sea wall, a dozen ragged men labour at a windlass, heads bowed and shoulders straining while Imperial officers watch idly. The harbour chain, being let down for the day. 

One of those new arrivals could be the very ship they’ve been waiting for.

Suddenly the icy day seems full of hope. She opens her mind gently again to Cassian and feels his excitement and happiness, mirroring hers, and his thrill of pleasure at their contact renewed. 

They’ll meet the ship as it docks, reunite with Maia and Rue, bring Bodhi to his family, fetch their horse from his stable, their things from the inn. By noon they could be setting off, on their way at last to Ea’dhu with Captain Hera. This is the day they leave the city by the sea, and set off, at last, _at last_ , to find her mother.

And then with Mama safe, and her students rescued, maybe one day they can return here, and all of them will study, with Mama and with Chirrut. Maybe the day will come when she can become what she was truly meant to be. A witch of true power, whose hands can help heal all the griefs of the world.

“Come on, love,” she says, grinning at the giddy pleasure of it all. Everything coming together, at last, at last. “Let’s go and meet Mai and Rue and this smuggler of theirs.”


End file.
